Make Your Own Clipboard
Petitions and clipboards are so closely linked that a North Dakota rule about petitions is called the “Clipboard Rule”! You will want to carry your petitions on a clipboard to make it easy for people to sign. You can clip several petitions to a board and turn them as needed, and when a petition is filled, move it to the back of the stack.
Clipboards from an office supply store are fine, especially at fair booths where you don’t have to carry them around and can lay a pen beside them. But they have a couple of drawbacks. They are a little heavy and awkward to use when you are carrying several clipboards at once – and when gathering signatures in a crowd you should always carry two or three, so that more than one person can sign at once. And they don’t provide a place to hold the pen.
Charlene Nelson of Casselton designed a homemade clipboard that is lightweight, holds the pen for you – and is cheap! Take a piece of heavy corrugated cardboard (I use white cardboard from bacon boxes that I get at a local pizza factory) and cut it to about 9” x 12”. Then put a heavy rubber band, about ¼” wide, around the middle. The rubber band will hold your petitions in place and also hold the pen.
Good luck, and thanks for circulating our petition!
Shirley Starke, Coordinator
Save Our Soil