Travis Seitler: Web Designer

Now that I don’t work for Geppi anymore, I’ll go ahead and “out” him on this one.

For both 2007 and 2008, everyone at Gemstone Publishing was given pre-filled ballots (typically leaving one or two blank spaces for our own personal choices) to sign and send in. Nobody was required to submit the ballots (I didn’t either year; mostly because I was disgusted by the scheme), but I’m sure we still had two- or three-dozen nearly identical ballots sent for both of those years.

The worst part is that they were so pathetically obvious about it. In 2007, completely blank ballots were e-mailed to Gemstone employees… and then we were told to not touch those, but to instead wait for the “J.C. Vaughn-approved” (pre-filled) versions to be passed around.

In ‘08, after the pre-filled ballots were given to us, Vaughn had a member of the Scoop! editorial staff e-mail everyone in the company, looking for a tally of who all was going to submit ballots. (Now maybe I’m just clueless, but why would he even want to know… unless they were planning on submitting forged ballots “on our behalf”?)

Spammy, attention-grabbing behavior like this from the people in charge is one of the many reasons why I got off that sinking ship. (Sigh.)

I really don’t know what to suggest in the way of fixing the Harveys. Maybe a ballot system where you aren’t allowed to nominate any project you were involved with? You’d still get backscratching, but it wouldn’t be as much of a “biggest publisher who cares, wins” nomination process.

(This post originally appeared as a comment at Heidi MacDonald’s THE BEAT.)

UPDATE: Not only did my remarks influence a follow-up article at THE BEAT, but I’m getting incoming links from CBR’s Robot 6, Comics Worth Reading is quoting me, and I landed a mention in TCJ’s ¡Journalista! Nuts, I tell you! NUTS!

My driver license was set to expire on Wednesday, so I figured this morning would be a good time to renew it. While I was there, I went ahead and updated my voter registration, too. I had been listed as an independent, but I changed it back to Republican so that I can participate in the primaries.

Don’t tell me Ron Paul doesn’t stand a chance!

Wanna see my boss’ latest venture? This pop-culture museum (right beside Oriole Park at Camden Yards and across the light rail from the Baltimore Convention Center) has been attracting a lot of attention since it opened in September ‘06, including this segment of Retirement Living’s The Daily Apple:

Sometimes a guy just has to get up and stretch his legs a bit.