T-Minus 07:30

By Maurice

• voting

If you’ve been keeping track of the blog and the Awards here, then you know that in a little under eight hours, the nominations will close (7:00 a.m. Eastern time) and they will be tallied to reveal the finalists in the 21 categories.

We will pick the top three blogs for each category according to the votes after we’ve went through and weeded out the invalid ballots. So all of you who voted for one blog in each category (you know who you are) will have done so for naught — we’re scrapping those so we can have a fair count. I mean, how would it look if the Best International Blog, for example, was blatantly written in the US? Or if the Best LGBT Blog has homophobic slurs? Not very good, and we’re definitely going to besmirch the Awards by letting that pass. We’re already looking forward into 2007 for ways to decrease that kind of ignorant behavior.

So go ahead and get your votes in now. The form will close at 7:00 a.m. Eastern time, and we will have the finalists posted at midnight on Wednesday, August 16.