Hey, you want to be mayor of Denver? It's not too late to get in the game.

Making the ballot is as easy as losing a hubcap to a city pothole. You need only 300 valid signatures.

Just two people have taken out petition packets. One of them, Dwight Henson, has no money and was homeless when he ran in 2003. He hasn't turned in his signatures yet.

But neither has Whatsisname, the lanky incumbent. The streets have been cleared but he still has a lot of tough challenges on his plate, such as finding a local lawyer not under suspicion of burglary to serve as city attorney. Maybe he'll get distracted and forget that he must file his signatures by 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Sure, it's a long shot. He has minions around to remind him of life's little deadlines.

But perhaps not all his signatures will be valid and he'll come up short. There is no cure period.

Unless you learn from Councilwoman Carol Boigon. She airily turned in her signatures on deadline in 2003 and so many were rejected she came in under 300. But she could afford to hire attorney Mark Grueskin, and she had Mayor Wellington Webb in her corner. The election commission voted 2-1 to put her on the ballot anyway, her votes coming from Webb appointees. This year she made sure to file plenty of signatures in plenty of time.

Even if John Hickenlooper submits enough signatures, you still might be blessed by a blizzard on May 1, Election Day, reminding everyone of the December and January snowstorms. After all, it was an Election Day snowstorm in May 1983 that knocked out Mayor Bill McNichols. The paralyzing Christmas blizzard of 1982 was still fresh in voters' minds.

Oops. Better pray for a weeklong snowstorm around April 20 instead. It's an all-mail ballot this year. May 1 is too late. Hickenlooper truly is blizzard-proof and Teflon-coated.

There will be no mayor's race without you. Indeed this is shaping up as the dullest city election in memory. Auditor Dennis Gallagher has only one challenger so far - Bill Wells, another retread who was wiped out in the same race in 2003.

With the withdrawal of former Denver Democratic Chairwoman Sharron Klein, Stephanie O'Malley apparently has the race for the newly created elected clerk and recorder position sewn up.

For a few dizzying days this week Election Commissioner Sandy Adams even contemplated running for clerk. But she consulted with friends who reminded her that, fairly or not, she's linked with the Denver's election disaster in November. "I went down with the ship and it's hard to distance yourself from a sunk ship," she said.

As for the 13-member City Council, only the three seats being vacated are drawing many candidates. There are eight hopefuls in District 3, eight in District 8 and five in District 7.

Privatize the clerks? Senate Bill 45, which would put a cap of 25 cents a page on what state and local agencies can charge for photocopies of public records, won preliminary passage in the Senate Friday.

The curent legal limit is $1.25, said to be the highest in the nation.

Needless to say, the county clerks are resisting the legislation. They produced a "simple cost analysis" of what it costs them to make copies for the public.

A survey of nine populous counties along the Front Range produced these figures: Average annual employee salary: $44,030. Average salary per minute: 35 cents. Average time to produce a copy: 2 minutes. Average cost of paper, toner and equipment: 24 cents.

Thus, by the clerks' own computations, the average cost of copying a single page: 94 cents.

Isn't there something wrong here? Doesn't Kinko's make money charging the public about 10 cents a page?

If the county clerk's offices claim it costs them 94 cents to photocopy one page from a public document, perhaps it's time for the legislature to consider privatizing their various functions.

blakep@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5119.