Congrats! You voted!

Everyone who voted Tuesday deserves a big ol' wet sloppy kiss or something. Go you!

Voting *can* send a message, and I hope
1. Tuesday's message was heard and
2. the new "powers that be" are good stewards of said power.

Our precinct was busier than all get out. I believe we ended up around 75% turnout here. I had a really crappy morning since people were lined up out the door before we opened AND our ES&S box was not working at 7 AM. I had to open the polls for voting using a locked compartment on the voting machine until the ballot reader could be brought online. Talk about stress.

A couple of friends (I don't think I can technically say your names, but you know who you are...) stopped by early in the day to register and see me with my game face on :) It was nice to see them along with all the people almost looking eager to vote. Can you imagine - EAGER to vote! It does this small town political junkie girl's heart good to see that.

Speaking of things to see, I'm planning to watch an HBO special called "Hacking Democracy" this weekend. It all started with an investigation into how one Florida County ended up with a total of MINUS 16,022 votes for a presidential candidate in a recent election. Apparently no one knows why because the software logic is a "trade secret" of the manufacturer and there are no paper ballots to go back to. Riiiiiiiight.

All in all, you should be very proud of your elections process if you live in Minnesota. From what I see, we are leaps and bounds ahead of most of the country on process, machines, and voter turnout. We have paper ballots in addition to the electronic counting, well documented and communicated rules and regulations governing the elections, city and county election officials who work their buns off to make sure polling places have everything they need, and dedicated election judges who work tirelessly for 16-18 hours on election day (with precious little time to take a break on busy days) to make the entire thing look easy.

Yes, despite our (soon to be former) Secretary of State's attempts to mess it up, things continue to run pretty smoothly in Minnesota and we should all be thankful for that.