Bryan Weaver gathers signatures in Columbia Heights.

Just as you’re leaving the office to head home, candidates for the April 26 Special Election to fill the At-Large seat once occupied by D.C. Council Chair Kwame Brown will be handing in their nominating petitions to the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics. To actually get on the ballot, candidates had to gather 3,000 signatures by 5 p.m. today, which meant long hours of standing outside of Metro stations and supermarkets in less-than-ideal weather. Being the creatures of curiosity that we are, we informally reached out to a number of the candidates to see how many signatures they were planning on turning in today.

Interim Councilmember Sekou Biddle’s campaign said it would have roughly 8,000, while former D.C. Council Chair hopeful Vincent Orange filed around 6,000. Patrick Mara, the sole Republican in the race, tweeted on Monday that he had delivered 5,500, and followed up with another few hundred today. Jacque Patterson told us yesterday that he had roughly 3,600; he was hoping to close out today with 4,500. Josh Lopez, who had at least 3,000 when he filed his petitions on January 10, said he was gunning for an even 6,000. Former Ward 1 council candidate Bryan Weaver said he had gotten north of 3,000 signatures, while Statehood Green Party candidate Alan Page counted roughly 3,400. Ward 7 State Board of Education member Dorothy Douglas filed her petitions on Tuesday, but we didn’t get a solid count from her.

Does the number of signatures count? Yes and no.