Tonight my wife and I went to see the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at St. Mary’s Basilica in downtown Minneapolis. The ninth is my favorite classical work to see performed live–the sight of all of those people on stage at the same time is unparalleled. The acoustics in that building were not the greatest, but the beauty of the architecture made up for it.

It boggles my mind that people can’t shut up for 90 minutes. Unless you are saying you need an ambulance, be quiet! Between the people talking, the guy with the repeater cough and the lady flipping through her program during the performance, it was hard to focus on the music. Still, I enjoy attending classical performances and this is a work I think everyone should see at least once in their lifetime. The peak of the chorus in the last movement brings a tear to my eye every time…DK

Minnesota passed a new law this year that requires all counties to conduct a post-election audit of 2-4 randomly picked precincts. The paper ballot totals for Minnesota Governor, U.S. Senate and U.S. Congress will be manually counted and compared to the results of the optical scan machines. If there is more than a 0.5 percent difference, an automatic recount of the entire county will be called.

The non-partisan groups Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota and the League of Women Voters Minnesota have requested volunteers to observe these audits. I will be observing Dakota County on Wednesday morning and Goodhue County on Thursday morning. Should be interesting…DK

UPDATE: The Dakota County review went smoothly and all four precincts matched the machine count exactly. I picked the largest one to observe, Burnsville Precinct 2, which had about 1200 ballots and took a little more than two hours to complete. Goodhue County up next…DK

UPDATE 2: My experience in Goodhue County had the same end result, but the process was a little different. Goodhue has a new election official, Carolynn Holsten (sp?), who said she started in October. Chairs had been set out for observers about ten feet away from the two counting tables and there were two other observers from Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota when I arrived.

The review started and at one point I got up and walked to a table to get the count totals and observe the ballots. The election official asked me to stay in my seat, as they has been provided for us. I told her I need to be able to see the ballots and that I could be within three feet, as long as I didn’t touch the ballots or interfere with the people counting. I didn’t have anything with me that had that spelled out, so I just remained in my chair for most of the review. I did raise my hand and ask to review one ballot that was recorded as defective (it was an over count), but overall I really wasn’t close enough to see what was marked on any of the other ballots.

This situation made my uncomfortable, especially after Dakota County officials the previous day had made it a point several times during the review to make sure I could see each ballot clearly. The people doing the review in Goodhue County also had the machine totals in front them and seemed to be looking at those to see how many they needed in each stack versus totaling, then comparing.

I called Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota after the review and discussed my concerns with Director Mark Halvorson. He said Goodhue was one of the counties they had not been able to contact before the review, likely due to the recent turnover of county personnel. He also said I could have called him during the review and he would have spoke directly with the official right away. While the end result of this audit had the desired outcome, we both agreed that the new election review law could use some better guidelines for county election officials and observers in the future…DK

Look what I found on the floor this week. I went to a different junior high in Saint Paul, but all of these people became friends of mine in high school, including my wife. Recognize anyone? Are you one of them? Drop me a line at dk@code.mn and give us an update…DK

The drive home tonight was magical: 70 degrees in November, both windows rolled down, great music playing on the iPod, sweet smells from restaurants and bakeries, the joy of driving a Mini around tight curves and a beautiful sunset over the Mississippi River. Probably won’t get another one of those for about six months…DK

Here is the tentative list of the people who will be representing me in the major offices:

• U.S. Senators: Norm Coleman (R) and Amy Klobuchar (D)
• U.S. Representative, District 2: John Kline (R)
• Governor: Tim Pawlenty (R)
• MN Attorney General: Lori Swanson (D)
• MN Secretary of State: Mark Ritchie (D)
• MN State Auditor: Rebecca Otta (D)
• MN Senate, District 38: Jim Carlson (D)
• MN House, District 38A: Sandra Masin (D)
• Eagan Mayor: Mike Maguire
• Eagan City Council: Peggy Carlson, Paul Bakken, Meg Tilley, Cyndee Fields

Overall, I think it was an interesting mix of results in this election. I’m neither excited or angry, so I guess that’s a positive. I do plan to communicate more with the people listed above and make them work for their money, something I haven’t done nearly enough in the past…DK

Today’s the day we’ve all been waiting for–the day when election ads stop on TV! Seriously, though, I encourage all of you to get informed and exercise your right to vote. You can’t bitch about things later if you don’t vote today. The League of Women Voters site has a good ballot site and will tell you where to vote.

I voted this morning at 8:15am and did not have to wait in line at all. My wife got there when the polls opened at seven and she had to wait about a half hour. The counter said I was ballot 243–let’s get those participation numbers up…DK

Our new office is done–at least until we earn enough money to buy a pool table and Chexx Hockey (new pictures here). The ceiling fans, fluorescent lights and security cameras were installed, the video editing workstation is configured, the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner has been set up, most of the trash and boxes have been removed and today our ultimate office chairs arrived.

We also launched the new code.mn company website this week, which has a WordPress blog here. I’ll be moving most of my work-related entries over to that site, just like I did for golf posts and the Golfing in Minnesota site.

Visitors are always welcome–give us a call at 952-212-9680 or just stop by. We are usually here during regular business hours…DK