Where Is My Tinfoil Wardrobe?

Hmmm. In Rensselaer County, just minutes north of here, we have an absentee ballot that lists Barack "Osama." The local newspaper dismisses the event as a "typo" (the "b" and the "s" are not near each other on a qwerty keyboard?) because "both sides" say it was a "mistake." Hmmm. The DA says there won't be any charges or an investigation. Hmmm. But "Rensselaer County is the only county in the state that prints ballots in-house." Have we talked to the printers about what happened after everybody proof read the ballot? The article doesn't say.

By day's end, officials decided to issue new ballots to all 300 voters. They realized some people might cross out the misspelling and write in the correct spelling.

"Election law is quite clear that any corrections done on a ballot will nullify the vote, so to be safe, we re-issued them," McDonough said.

One Sand Lake resident who caught the misspelling, and who asked to be anonymous, was skeptical. "It's a little suspicious and at least grossly incompetent," the voter said.

District Attorney Richard McNally said the incident is unlikely to produce a criminal investigation.

Call me crazy, but the "typo" has a certain smell that remains in my nostrils despite all the bipartisan explaining.