Are any of the provinces active at all? I rarely see any posts in the provincial boards
They have been in the past, but right now there's generally one or two active people per province. That means there's opportunity to do interesting things, but it also means it can feel like shouting into the void... unless someone else gets interested and picks up on what you're putting down, which can happen! Look at XPB in CZ.
I find the seeming lack of interest a bit disheartening
I'm really sorry about that! Please know that it hasn't always been like this, and with great new citizens like yourself, we're going to turn things around.
If no one's nibbling on what you're putting down yet, you can throw some other things out there as they interest you, and maybe one of those will grab someone's attention. You folks start a dialogue, and maybe a third person joins. Before you know it, you end up having engineered a turnaround in the province and have it the most active one in the country.
Don't get disheartened... This country can become what you want it to be!
You know, I kind of agree with the sentiment. I remember when so many people were posting it was impossible to keep up. We've had tons of citizens go inactive for many reasons. Some didn't like when the FreeDems took over, some are so monarchist that any whiff of anti-monarchy sentiment forced them into permanent retirement. Others got busy with life and forgot about us.
Those of us who remain are trying our best to get things going again, (or to keep the bare minimum going) but it's not easy when only a handful of people are regular posters here.
We are about to head into another election, and sometimes that gets people more interested also. I encourage any active, more "seasoned" citizen to contact at least one inactive citizen and get them to post. Heck, if even our own king would come on once in a while that might be something interesting to see also!
On a related note, how does one go about filing to run for a provincial assembly?
(And since Benito has you vote for parties — what if I wanted to run as an independent?)
Each province handles that differently. In some provinces, the Chancery (the Secretary of State...me), runs an election for them for Senate and sometimes for their provincial assemblies. Other provinces handle it all on their own.
I'm not super familiar with how each province does things, as I am Maricopan and we run our own elections. Your best bet is to post a thread in the Benito sub-forum and ask questions.