An interesting thing happened as Indiana's Favorite blog voting started:

Blogs that featured one of the "vote for us" badges quickly jumped to the front in the contest.

Why?  Because blogs have real fans.  Even small ones.  And they want to tell others about the value they are getting out of their favorite blogs.  The whole purpose of the contest was to let others know about the great blogs that are written for Hoosiers and by Hoosiers.  We started by having an open nomination period so we would get as many blogs as possible into the contest.

It's just a few hours into voting I'm really happy to see people are clicking on the links and checking out the blogs.  I'm hoping the real winner in this contest are the Linking Indiana members that take the time to check out the contestants.