I haven't blogged anything since switching the name of my blog. I've been struggling with what I could add to the universe that is worthy of other people's time. The answer is pretty much nothing, so what the hell, I'll just throw out random things as I think of them.
The inspiration for the blog name is my absentee ballot in the 2008 elections. While I anally did everything perfectly right, my ballot ended up in the pile of absentee ballots rejected for a reason other than the four legal reasons for rejecting an absentee ballot (aka The Fifth Pile).
Long story short - I was made aware of this through a friend who saw my name on a list of rejected ballots. A couple of phone calls from the Franken campaign confirmed I was a person of interest to them because A. I voted for Al and B. my vote had yet to be counted. To the best of my knowledge, my ballot was fine until in traveled from City Hall to my precinct to be counted on election night. When it got there, an election judge saw that it lacked a voter registration slip, therefore my name must be on the election role. He/She couldn't match my name to any on the role so my ballot was rejected. But my name was on the list (Jen can sign an affidavit if necessary).
All of this had me watching the recount with an extra level of interest. I dug around a little right after the Hennepin County absentee ballots were reviewed and everything seemed OK at that point. I never got a letter from the Secretary of State so everything points to my vote eventually counting - just for the Senate race though. I did my best to vote for Obama, but intricacies of an H followed by a J followed by and E spoiled my chance to take part in history.
