I am really excited to announce that the essay entries for the Goat Giveaway are posted and ready for your votes. I was overwhelmed to receive so many essays and I’m glad that your votes will be narrowing the field for me because I would never be able to chose between all these.
Couple of things.
To vote, just click the star under the entry ONCE. The number of votes are tallied automatically and the text under the star will change to “Vote Saved.” You can practice voting on this post to see how it works. Voting will be open until this Friday, September 25 at midnight eastern time. Comments left on the entries will NOT be counted as votes.
Now, I know that all of you are honest and wonderful people but please discourage your supporters from trying to vote for you multiple times. We can see the IP addresses that votes are coming from, and will be automatically alerted to any suspicious activity by the software. Any entries that appear to be receiving fraudulent votes will automatically be disqualified and the essays will be removed without discussion.
I feel terrible about this, but we were unable to post some of the pictures that came embedded in word or .pdf entries. Lauria spent hours and hours trying to make this work, and we just couldn’t. Feel free to post a link to your photos on the comments to your essay if you like.
Because we received so many entries before the entry deadline, we were unable to accept entries sent in afterwards. I’m sorry, but I’m trying to be fair.
Once the voting ends, we will be contacting the top vote getters to be sure they meet all of my criteria for winning the flock. The folks at Sand Creek Post and Beam and I will select the very best candidate as the winner. Our decision will be final.
As I said in my previous post, I reserve the right not to award the flock if I don’t find a suitable candidate.
The winner will be announced no later than October 2 here on the blog. We will also announce the winner of the “Spread the Word” giveaway at that time. Anyone entered in the Goat Giveaway will automatically be disqualified from participation in the “Spread the Word” giveaway.
That’s said, it’s time to Vote! Go to the Goat Giveaway Page and use the menu bar to select the entrant you would like to read. They’re sorted alphabetically by WordPress automatically. (For anyone who was a minor, we posted using only their last initial rather than full last name.)
Good luck everyone.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Did I miss something? What’s this “Spread the word” giveaway about?
I am confused (not an infrequent state of mind for me!) We vote once for one candidate? Sort of looks like you vote once per candidate you think is great?
So, we can vote for more than one entry? Cause I literally don’t think I’ll be able to narrow it down to one, and I’m only on the Ls!
Crystal, Susan and Erin also hosted a smaller contest with s surprise prize for folks who spread the word about the goat giveaway in the most places.
Yes, you can vote for more than one candidate but you can only vote for each one once. Hope that clears it up.
I know it defeats the purpose of trying to win……but I want to vote for other people besides myself! Talk about a great bunch of essays!
Susan, I just read a few essays selected at random…wow. I don’t know how in the world you will be able to choose a winner!
Good luck, everybody
Susan, it might be a cool feature to have a running tally of who’s in the lead. Perhaps it’s too complicated technology-wise, but it would be nice. I know whenever I’ve voted for MVFF in contests, I check in often to see how close to the top we are.
Maggie – remember that the top vote-getter might not necessarily win – see Susie’s comments – so the “running tally”approach might just cause a lot of false expectations.
I was up late last night and early this morning to read all of the essays. There certainly is some stiff competition! I am very impressed. Good luck to all!
Aaack!!! How can I read that many essays in 3 days? How many can we vote for?
I’d love to read all the essays, but your site is loading soooo slowly, it’s going to be very difficult. I’m not that patient and I have only so much time. Am I the only one having this problem? Yours is the only site with this issue, so I’m assuming your are just overloaded?
I vote for Amy Karasz
Good luck Lori! Bees, Chickens and now Goats, maybe??
Hi – I tried voting this morning and am not able to. I click the star and it’s not a link. Is there a problem with the site?
Thanks!
Jennifer, I forgot all about that! Never mind