HAWLEY — This tiny community’s single ballot box, an old oaken contraption kept in a former one-room schoolhouse, will next perform its civic duty when Hawley votes for eight officials ranging from selectman to tree warden.

But there’s one glaring problem: No one from this Berkshires hill town is running in the May 3 election.

The ballot, literally, is a blank slate in the state’s fifth-smallest community, a hamlet of 336 residents with no post office, no gas station, no convenience store, and a single stop sign that some people good-naturedly call an infringement on their liberties.

The deadline to return candidacy papers passed March 15 without a single person submitting the required 25 signatures since the nomination period opened in mid-February.