 Are you thinking about running for office? Don't be shy. You have a presidential look about you. And that hair. But how do you actually run for office? It takes more than just printing up a bunch of buttons. The rules about getting onto the ballot, meaning to be on the list of candidates people can vote for in an election, vary from state to state. The Constitution leaves this up to the states, though Congress could establish a national set of rules for federal elections if it wanted to. Obviously, there's the basic way to get on the ballot. Win the primary for the Republican or Democratic Party. You can try to get creative here, but that probably won't get you very far. Now, as a general rule, you have to register with the party and meet their internal qualifications to run in the primary. There is such a thing as a party caucus to select candidates, though this generally only happens in presidential elections. The big difference here is that in a caucus, the voting happens live and in person instead of through ballots. You can either vote directly for the candidates or vote for delegates who will vote on your behalf to pick the candidates. Either way, the idea is that everyone decides live and in person. More states have primaries than caucuses, possibly because all that voting can get out of hand. Let's use Pennsylvania as an example. There, to get on the primary ballot, a candidate from a major party needs to pay a fee and provide anywhere from 300 to 2,000 signatures, depending on the importance of the office. The fee to run for president, senator, or governor in a primary is $200. There are no records of anyone not being able to pay. Candidates also need to file paperwork with their personal information, a statement on their financial interests, and a statement that says what they're running for. They need to promise that they meet the qualifications to run. The other way to get on the ballot is to run as a third party or independent candidate. Signatures from real people. The candidate needs enough signatures to equal 2% of all the votes cast in the largest election last time around for that district. To give you an idea of the numbers involved, in 2010, the number of votes cast to the different Pennsylvania congressional districts ranged from around 150,000 to 250,000. The senatorial election had over 4 million votes cast. The state-level elections had smaller numbers, not going much above 27,000. So, to be a third party candidate for this Pennsylvania state legislature, you would need around 540 signatures. To run for Congress, you would need between 3 and 5,000 signatures. And to run for the Senate, you would need 80,000 signatures. For comparison, Pennsylvania's sixth largest city, Scranton, has only around 76,000 people in it, and there's more on top of all of those signatures. You have to meet all of the qualifications to run. You have to be 25 to run for Congress, 30 to run for the Senate, and 35 to be president. In Pennsylvania, most state offices require you to be 30. This is likely for good reason. You also have to be a citizen of the area and have lived there for a certain period of time. Again, there's probably a good reason for this. In Pennsylvania, you also can't run if you've been convicted of bribery, fraud, embezzlement, perjury, or any other infamous crime. Maybe that way, they think their elected representatives will be honest. That's right, honest. It's adorable. To pick another state, Oklahoma, the rules are largely the same. There's a specific rule requiring candidates to use their real names and not the name of a famous person, which means someone's tried that at some point. The filing fees are much higher. Some other differences are that in Oklahoma, you can file a petition to contest a candidacy, the number of signatures required is different to get on the ballot, and there's also a law against bringing a intoxicating liquor within a half mile of a polling place. Some states allow you to write a name in on the ballot rather than selecting one of the options provided. This has the potential for abuse, though. Aside from electing representatives, many states may also allow resolutions onto the ballot. Try again. This is basically voting on a law directly rather than voting on a representative you'd like to vote on the laws. After all, who knows what they'll do once they get into office? These are called initiatives or referenda, and they have their own rules. In California, for example, you need to draft up what you want to do, although sometimes the government will help you draft it if you request. Then you have to gather signatures to get it on the ballot. In California, you need at least 5% of the number of votes cast in the last election for governor to put a proposed law on the ballot, and you need at least 8% to put a state constitutional amendment on the ballot. And you need to get those signatures in less than 5 months. Then your proposal can be voted on in the next election. So that's all you and that fabulous head of hair need to know before you go out and start kissing babies. And there you have it.