Election Calendar Worksheet.
Calculate and track every important date on your race — from petition circulation to Election Day — on one printable page.
Time is the great equalizer.
Money makes a campaign easier, but it can't buy you another day. The races you win are the ones where you saw the calendar — and worked it — before your opponent did. These are the dates this worksheet helps you nail down:
Getting on the Ballot
Petition circulation windows, filing fees, signature requirements, and the objection period — miss one of these dates and your name doesn't appear on the ballot, period.
Financial Filing Deadlines
Campaign finance reports are due to the state on fixed dates, regardless of how much you've raised. Late filings come with fines, bad press, and sometimes ballot disqualification.
Voter Registration Cutoffs
Once registration closes, your universe of voters is locked. Know the date so you can pivot from registration drives to turnout, and so you can target your real ballot universe — not yesterday's.
Primary & Election Day
The two non-negotiable dates. Every other deadline on your race is measured backward from these. Get them in front of you on day one — and never lose sight of them.
The worksheet gives you a single, printable page to write down every important date — and the number of days between each one — so you always know how much runway you've got left before the next deadline hits.
A note from Craig.
Every candidate I've ever worked with had the same fears when they ran for the first time. Is my district winnable? What if people lie about me? How will my family be affected? Can I afford this? Where do I find help?
The advice most of them got was simple: raise more money, knock more doors. But after working with scores of candidates at every level of office, I learned that's not what wins races.
The candidate who won every single time was the one who got organized, took the time to really understand the electorate, and put a message out that resonated with voters. They had a system. They had a plan. And they stuck to it.
This worksheet is the very first piece of that system. Print it, fill it in, hang it somewhere you'll see it every day, and you'll already be ahead of most first-time candidates on the ballot with you.
