They’re having an election in the Evergreen State, and you can vote in it — if you can get this site to load (it’s very slow at the moment). The election is for the design of the state quarter, and right now, this hideous thing has an enormous lead:

Apparently it’s based on Native American art or something, but uh, frankly, it’s ugly, IMHO. On Fark, they’re calling it the “Robo-Whale” or the “Whale Plane.” Heh. Amazingly, with over a million votes cast, it has more than 60% of the vote right now! (And you can’t blame those silly Farkers; only 1,597 people had clicked on the Fark link at last check, so most of the votes are coming from somewhere else. Possibly from “robots”; see below.)

Personally, I would advise Washingtonians, if they want to avoid national ridicule a la Wisconsin (mooo!), to vote for #2, which presently has just under 30% of the vote:

Yeah, it’s a little silly-looking — “Next week on It Could Happen Tomorrow: a giant fish eats Mount Rainier!” — but it’s way better than the Robo-Whale.

Personally, I’m surprised there isn’t an option featuring a picture of a referee accepting a bribe. :)

P.S. You gotta love the security measures on this thing. Their chosen method of preventing voter fraud is an earnest plea: “Please only vote one time per person.” Heh. It’s like the Honor Code writ large. Trust the voters! Yeah, that’ll work. (Insert gratuitous King County joke here.)

UPDATE: Apparently the results of the online poll are not binding. According to the Seattle Times, “The deadline for voting is April 30. Gov. Christine Gregoire will consider the results before selecting a winner.” Which, coincidentally, is precisely what a state judge did when he put Gregoire in office!

(Just kidding! I believe Gregoire’s election was legitimate — as legitimate as a statistically tied election can ever be, anyway; see also: Florida 2000 — and most of the objections thereto were trumped-up partisan nonsense, as I’ve expained before. But I couldn’t resist the cheap, obvious joke. Hehe.)

Anyway, more on the quarters here and here.

UPDATE 2: Stefan Sharkansky of Sound Politics, an anti-Gregoire site, writes: “The system appears to allow people to vote as many times as they want to, or even run scripts that automatically vote repeatedly. … #3 is winning, with an implausible 574,896 votes out of 952,884 cast at this writing. The number of votes appears to be increasing by more than 20 per second, strongly suggesting that one or more robots are stacking the vote.”

Not only that, but they eat old people’s medicine for fuel! And when they grab you with those metal claws, you can’t break free, because they’re made of metal, and robots are strong. :) God, that skit never gets old…

P.P.S. You can also vote for Montana’s quarter. No word on any possible robot involvement in that election.

I’ve just added some new events to my countdown sidebar at left: academic milestones of this semester and next, the start date of my associateship at Bryan Cave in Phoenix, and also, the debut date of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. :) In addition, I’ve just learned something awesome about two of the events I was already counting down to: a teaser trailer for Eragon will reportedly be included with X-Men 3! SWEET! So, May 26 just became an even bigger day in my book. :)

Golfer Phil Mickelson wins his second green jacket at the Masters in Augusta, Georgia. Visit CNN for the latest.

I’m a bit behind the curve on this, but Cynthia McKinney apologized Thursday for hitting a Capitol police officer. Er, sorta. Here is her full statement:

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I come before this body to personally express, again, my sincere regret about the encounter with the Capitol Hill Police. I appreciate my colleagues who are standing with me, who love this institution and who love this country. There should not have been any physical contact in this incident. I have always supported law enforcement, and will be voting for H. Res. 756 expressing my gratitude and appreciation to the professionalism and dedication of the men and women of the U.S. Capitol Police. I am sorry that this misunderstanding happened at all and I regret its escalation. And I apologize.

This came after considerable prodding from the Congressional Black Caucus, apparently. Well, good for them. As for McKinney, it goes without saying that if you or I had hit a cop, we’d be in jail awaiting our arraignment, not having discussions with our colleagues about whether to issue a half-hearted apology that doesn’t really take responsibility for anything (”this misunderstanding”), uses lovely “mistakes were made”-type passive language (”its escalation”), and suggests that both parties were to blame (”should not have been any physical contact”). So forgive me for not being overly impressed. (Previous post here.)

The Hartford Courant reports on the idiotic decision by Borders bookstores to pull the April/May issue of Free Inquiry magazine off the bookshelves because it contains the Mohammed cartoons. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

In a related story — and with apologies to those who believe I’m overhyping it — tonight at 11:00 PM is your last chance to watch Part 1 of South Park’s “Cartoon Wars” episode on TV. Part 2, if it actually happens, is due to air Wednesday at 10:00 PM.

CORRECTION: Actually, Comedy Central has added another showing of Part 1, on Wednesday at 9:30 PM — immediately preceding when Part 2 is supposed to air. That wasn’t on the schedule before, but it is now. Seems like a good sign.

P.S. And of course, you can always watch it on YouTube: parts 1, 2 and 3.