The filing period is over. See who's running.

Durham County Board of Elections Director Mike Ashe wore a U.S. flag necktie to work Monday.
"We're open for business," he said. "We're doing great. We've got plenty of precinct officials, plenty of ballots ... and enough money to do our job."

That job, by the way, does not include enforcing rules on campaign signs. That comes under the city-county planning department, which decrees that they can't go out or up until 45 days before the election.

That would be late August this time around. Here are some more election rules, as Ashe explained them to Bull's Eye this morning:

• On the ballot, candidates are listed in alphabetical order. In general elections, it's regular old ABCD etc. In primaries, though, the starting point moves through the alphabet from one election to the next. This year, the order is CDEF ... XYZAB such that a candidate named "Charlie" would be listed ahead of "Abel" and "Baker."
• Under elections law, every candidate must have an organization to receive and spend money, and file an organizational report with the Board of Elections. Organizations may be created ahead of filing — most office-holders keep them active between elections — but have to be created and reported within 10 days of filing.
• The first financial reports from 2009 candidates are due Sept. 1; reports are posted at the county Board of Elections Web site.
• To file the required financial reports, a candidate or campaign treasurer has to take a 45-minute training course, which can be done online or at the state elections office in Raleigh.
• Before 2006, candidates were free to spend leftover campaign funds any way they liked — say, on fishing boats or new houses. Now, the law spells out what's a legitimate use and what's not.

See photos of the continuing protests in Iran following presidential elections.

See photos from street violence and protests following the controversial results of elections in Iran.

According to Mike Ashe, Durham County's elections director, "a new election cycle" gets started tomorrow.

Yes, we just had an election. In Durham, though, there's an election every year, and Ashe is hosting a lunchtime get-together for political-party chairpeople, their colleagues and the board of elections staff, to talk about appointing precinct officials.

"We are all working together to provide fair and honest elections," Ashe said in an emailed invitation to the press.

Durham voters are electing a mayor and three City Council members this fall. So far, the only candidate to make an official announcement is mayoral hopeful Steven Williams.

However, incumbent Mayor Bill Bell has indicated he plans to run for a fifth two-year term; incumbent council members Cora Cole-McFadden and Howard Clement have also said they will stand for re-election for their Ward 1 and 2 seats and Ward 3 incumbent Mike Woodard shows no sign of planning to quit after a single term.

Candidate filing opens at noon July 3 and closes at noon July 17. The primary election is Oct. 6 and general election Nov. 3.

For Bull Citizens' ready reference, the city attorney's Web site has a FAQ on how municipal elections are done and changes proposed for them.

See www.durhamnc.gov/departments/attorney/pdf/election_faq.pdf.

The Durham city council has set April 6 for a public hearing on the way it is elected.

"Let the public discourse begin," said elections director Mike Ashe.

By voting Monday night to hold the public hearing, the council began the process that could change Durham's council elections from a non-partisan primary and general election system to a non-partisan pluraity system.

That means holding one election instead of two — or three, when a runoff primary is needed.

Durham County Board of Elections chairman Ronald Gregory requested the change in a February letter to council members and Mayor Bill Bell.

According to Ashe, the switch would save taxpayers between $170,000 and $180,000 per municipal election year.

"This is purely a way to save money we don't have right now," Ashe told council members Monday.

"We don't believe this helps or hurts anyone, any group, any candidate," he said.

Read more about it in Wednesday's News & Observer.

Durham County elections director Mike Ashe talked to the city council Thursday about switching council elections to a non-partisan plurality method.

The change would dispense with the city's present primary system and settle contests in one general election.

According to Ashe, the switch would save $175,000 to $180,000 each election year.

He said that 487 North Carolina cities use a non-partisan plurality system; 25 use the non-partisan primary and general election; 28 a non-partisan election with run-off; and nine hold partisan primaries before a general election.

"All forms of elections serve democracy well," Ashe said. "This is not a question of which election is better, this is a question of saving thousands of dollars."

(reported by Bull's Eye correspondent Vernal Coleman)

For those who don't get the North Raleigh News or Midtown Raleigh News, there's a Q&A today with Dana Cope about the new Children's Political Action Committee.

Cope has got some big goals for the PAC. In particular, he thinks the PAC's ability to spend unlimited amounts of money to run third-party advocacy ads in this fall's school board elections could have a major impact.

While it might not be the best analogy, imagine a Swift Boat-like ad campaign being mounted against certain candidates this fall.

A handsome coffee table book arrived in the mail today. It is the Poynter Institute's collection of the best front pages of newspapers published on November 5, 2008. That, of course, was the day after America's historic election of its first African-American president.

The News & Observer's page is one of 100 from around the world selected by Poynter, a St. Petersburg, Fla. nonprofit devoted to journalism education, for this book. Our sister publication, The Charlotte Observer, is also included. A team of journalists contributed to this page, but we are especially proud of news designer Jennifer Bowles, a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism, has designed many News & Observer fronts and special projects.

The print newspaper has sometimes been undervalued in the age of the Internet. "Election Day, November 4, 2008, was different," cartoonist Garry Trudeau, writes in his introduction to the book. He describes an election evening of boistrous celebrations around the globe. "And then the next day, after the street parties were over, people went out and did something many of them hadn't done in years. They bought newspapers. Yes, newspapers. By the trainload, actually."

The printed paper was not for the purpose of information, Trudeau notes, rather to the people who stood in long lines, it was a tangible keepsake "that can forever evoke and refresh a deeply consequential memory."

Prior to election, we mostly saw this reaction with sports championships.

Here's to the ink-stained, bird cage fillers, fish wraps that we love.

The Poynter book is available here.

Linda Williams