ohmidog!

North Dakota voters turned down a measure that would have made cruelty to dogs, cats and horses a felony, leaving it one of just two states without felony penalties for mistreating animals.

The other is its neighbor, South Dakota.

A citizen initiative on Tuesday that would have made animal cruelty punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine was defeated by nearly a 2-1 margin.

That means animal abuse remains a misdemeanor, and the most severe punishment for cruelty in the state will continue to be a year in jail and a $2,000 fine.

North Dakota’s two major farm groups opposed the measure, saying it was vague and poorly worded, according to the Associated Press.

North Dakotans to Stop Animal Cruelty says it plans to  to continue its efforts to change the law.

(Photo: From the Facebook page of North Dakotans to Stop Animal Cruelty)

An Albuquerque man who gave his dog’s name when he was approached during a voter registration drive at a Wal-Mart two years ago didn’t think “Tuckup Koepke” would actually become a registered voter.

But he did.

Don Pizzolato says he filled out the paperwork with his dog’s name, and a fake birth date and social security number — not expecting he would end up registered to vote in Bernalillo County. A week later though, his dog received a voter registration card in the mail.

Pizzolato’s decision to go public with the story — on the website Duke City Fix – was in response to an op-ed piece in the Sunday Albuquerque Journal in which the county clerk said voter fraud would be “extremely rare.”

“In Tuckup’s case either name, address, Social Security number or species should have raised some sort of flag. Apparently none of this was a problem for the wizards charged with keeping the integrity of the electoral process somewhere north of Richard Daley’s Chicago,” Pizzolato wrote.

“Anyone want to take a guess as to how successful I would be if I repeated the experiment ten times (different pet names, of course).”

Pizzolato said his dog — you can look up Tuckup’s registration (voter, that is) here — isn’t really going to vote.

The county clerk he was attempting to refute, Maggie Toulouse Oliver, was less than amused with it all, and contacted law enforcement authorities after seeing the website contribution. Registration fraud is a fourth-degree felony.

Criminal charges were dismissed Monday against a Seattle area woman who registered her dog to vote, according to the Seattle Times.

Jane Balogh, 67, a grandmother and Army veteran had registered her Australian shepherd-terrier mix as a voter to protest lax standards for voters to prove their identity and citizenship. She used a utility bill in the dog’s name — Duncan M. MacDonald — as identification.

A King County District Court judge dropped a misdemeanor charge of making a false or misleading statement to a public servant, based on Balogh’s completion of the terms of a plea agreement reached in September 2007.

She paid $240 in court costs and completed 10 hours of community service at the Tacoma Rescue Mission.

According to the Times, Balogh made no attempt to hide the deception, telling a number of elected officials what she had done and putting a pawprint instead of a signature on an absentee-ballot envelope.

She didn’t try to vote using the dog’s registration.