An article in today’s Washington Post describes the way the Internet is changing Presidential politics.

What’s true at the national level is even more true at the local and state level.

Example Number One: me.

I’m not supposed to be in office. In the 2001 redistricting, my district was carefully drawn to make sure I couldn’t win it. And it almost worked. But because I communicated so regularly with voters, even a few who told me they “never voted for anyone else in your party” pulled the voting lever for me.

We didn’t have access to many of the tools that are available today. There was email, but not all my colleagues knew how to use it. (Actually, some still don’t. One older veteran still asks me to “Send me an Internet on that.”)

Today, I use email, a web site, an electronic newsletter, online surveys, and a blog.

It hasn’t replaced all my other communication. I still mail a lot. I go to community meetings and school events. I knock on doors.

But technology has made it easier for me to reach more people.

Now I’m looking forward to talking with colleagues in Algeria about the many ways to use technology.

Note: This is cross posted at www.algiers2008.com, which is a blog we have created to document our training mission to Algeria.

That’s what my daughter Sara, the former sportswriter, will say when she sees my bracket over at NLS. That apparently is the phrase the cognoscenti use when what they really mean is, “You went with the Committee picks???”

Everybody is an expert at bracket time. Everybody has an idea about some team (George Mason, Gonzaga) that can make a run. And everybody tries to make sure their brackets include the 7, 10, or 11 seed they think will go deep into the tournament.

So here’s my answer: Kansas. They’re my sleeper team.

OK, I know the Committee picked them as a 1 seed. But Kansas flops every year. Three coaches, several All Americas later, I have learned NEVER to pick Kansas past the Round of 16. But everybody–everybody–says that they’re the real deal. So this year, they’re my Cinderella.

Headed into the Bat, er, Basketball Cave now–if I emerge, it will not be to discuss Virginia politics, but that buzzer beater that just blew everybody’s brackets.

Including, probably, mine.

David Bulova, one of the most knowledgeable members of the House when it comes to environmental issues, introduced a study resolution to examine new pollution problems in the Potomac. David noted that scientists are finding male fish that have begun growing eggs. His study resolution would have had the House examine whether man-made chemicals might not be the source of the problem.

Turns out he was right abut the issue–but the House didn’t want to pursue the study. The House has a particular bias against studies, I have noticed. Which may tell you a lot about how some of the legislation that gets through our chamber manages to pass.

Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish joins the fan club (and gives Virginia Quarterly Review some well-deserved exposure).

That’s how we started blogging. Two years ago, when the General Assembly went into overtime, we started our first blog, calling it Extra Innings. We figured if we hated blogging, we could just quit when we had a budget.

Now our friend Vivian Paige wonders if we’ll revive the name.

We are slated to vote on the budget today. But there will be at least one special session. There is general agreement that we can come back to resolve issues in the two competing bond bills. We are less sanguine about reaching consensus on transportation, but we really have to keep trying.

Given how hard we had to work to migrate from one blog name to another, I think we’ll stick with this one for now. But watch for Extra Innings posts as we slog on through the spring.

Two observations: In the House, the word rural is a one-syllable word. (It’s pronounced “rool.”)

Bill, however, is a two-syllable word (bee-yul).

As I suspected, the SOQ revisions are a very bad deal for school divisions.

You can see an interactive map here.

On February 12, just a few hours before the polls closed in a hotly contested Presidential primary, a cold front coated Northern Virginia’s roads with a sheen of dangerous ice. The Mixing Bowl, the massive system of flyovers and ramps where the Beltway and Shirley Highway intersect, was the most seriously impacted point: as a result, an untold number of commuters couldn’t make it to their polling places before the 7 PM deadline. Indignation erupted on the Internets, with outraged demands to know why Virginia didn’t follow Maryland’s lead and extend voting hours.

The problem, as a blogger with the great pseudonym of “Not A.E. Dick Howard” commented, is this: “. . . Maryland’s polls were kept open by operation of Maryland law at the order of a Maryland circuit judge. There is no parallel provision in Virginia law allowing the Virginia State Board of Elections, or the Governor of Virginia, to extend voting hours.”

Last week, the Governor stepped into the breach. While the deadline for mere legislators to propose a bill during this session has long since passed, under the Constitution of Virginia, His Excellency can send “such measures as he may deem expedient” down to the House and/or Senate any time the mood strikes him during the session. That’s what he did last week: he submitted a measure that was introduced in the Senate as SB 796 and in the House as HB 1577, permitting a court to extend voting hours in an officially declared emergency or in other situations that interfered with the voting process.

The proposal is certain to raise a lot of questions. It would permit extended voting hours in an affected “region,” potentially giving that region a leg up in turnout. Given Virginia’s growing political diversity, this could make a huge difference in tight races: in 2006 Jim Webb carried the entire state by around 9,300 votes, solely on the basis of huge margins in Northern Virginia (he carried my district alone by 12,000 votes). If it had rained earlier that day in a Republican corner of the state, and a judge had extended voting hours in that region to permit flooded-out voters to get to the polls, could it have affected the outcome?

But addressing the regional bias issue by extending voting hours statewide on the basis of conditions in one part of the state would pose problems of its own. One would be the impact on poll workers, those civic-minded men and women who staff the precincts for Election Day shifts that can run longer than 15 hours. As an article over the weekend points out, these workers, whose median age is in the 70s, already are stressed out due to heavy turnout and other demands of the job. Keeping the polls open for a couple of hours in Pennington Gap (which is west of Detroit), and requiring poll workers there and in other far-flung corners of Virginia to work late into the night, because of a snowstorm in NOVA, would be problematic.

So what’s the answer? You got me. I have a feeling we won’t come up with a solution in the next 10 days.

The House budget includes a huge policy shift–basically forcing local governments to assume even more responsibility for education costs.

It’s the worst thing we did this year. Maybe the worst thing we’ve done in several years.

Frank Rich’s column in today’s New York Times . . .