It Seems Some Candidates Have Blogger's Block

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 17, 2007

To blog or not to blog?

For Fairfax County candidates this year, the answer mostly seems to be no. While blogs have become a staple of campaigns from the presidential level on down, most local candidates seem to have blogger's block.

"I'm weighing the options," said Supervisor Penelope A. Gross (D-Mason), who will face Republican businesswoman Vellie Dietrich-Hall in November. "You have to decide on how much time you can spend and whether the commentary is going to be legitimate or not."

Gross has a point. Some candidates seem to have launched so-called blogs on their campaign sites with all good intentions, only to let them sit and gather cyber-dust.

Stan Reid, who's running in next month's Republican primary against Pat S. Herrity for Springfield District supervisor, has exactly one haiku-sized entry from April 27:

"The Primary Election is June 12th. Your vote is important."

Hall, who runs a defense contracting business, also has not posted since April 27. When she does write, she sometimes takes a lyrical bent, as she did in her March 15 discussion of diversity:

"As I sit here, it is snowing quite hard outside, blanketing everything in a thick layer of white. I am in awe at nature's ability to give each snowflake its own design making sure that no two are ever exactly alike. And it occurs to me that despite everything we have in common, nature has seen to it that as individual human beings we are each and every one of us, unique. We have our own personalities, traits, characteristics, needs, wants and dreams. And that's what makes us such a dynamic, diverse, interesting group. Nowhere is that diversity more highly prized and celebrated than right here in our own Mason District . . . "

Republican Doug Boulter, who will face Democrat Jeff McKay for the Lee District supervisor's seat this fall, has used his "Not Quite a Blog" to write about the county's lack of zoning code enforcement.

Perhaps the longest-running blog belongs to Chap Peterson, a Democrat running for the 11th District state Senate seat held by Republican Jeannemarie Devolites Davis. In "Ox Road South," which predates his candidacy, the Fairfax lawyer and former state delegate has written on topics as disparate as "The DaVinci Code" ("I saw an interesting plot. I saw a predictable attack on the history of the Catholic church. I saw everything except the key to any good book: a point.") and Jamestown's 400th anniversary ("Examine John Smith. When he took control of the starving colony, his rule for self-preservation was simple: if you don't work, you don't eat. . . . To borrow a current slang, he kept it real.")

Deus Ex Voting Machine

Wander through Fairfax County's cavernous warehouse in Springfield these days and, amid the library books and firefighters' oxygen tanks, you'll find election officials readying more than a thousand voting machines.

Each of the touch-screen devices is being loaded with the primary ballot and tested, the goal being to avoid a Florida- or Ohio-style primary disaster. "Our intent is that it be a seamless process to the voter," said county general registrar Jackie C. Harris.

It has been a little too seamless for many people. That's why June 12 will be the beginning of the last hurrah for the county's current inventory of DRE (direct record electronic) machines, which don't produce a paper receipt verifying that voters have had their selections properly recorded. This year, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) signed legislation barring localities from buying DRE models after July 1. Fairfax and other communities will begin replacing them with optical scanning machines that read paper ballots. Harris said she has spoken to county officials about the "significant capital investment" that will be involved.

In the meantime, to guard against security breaches, election officials have bought a $21,000 motion-sensitive fence to place around the DRE machines in the warehouse.

James Madison, Supervisor

The McLean Citizens Association, one of the region's largest neighborhood groups, took the Fairfax Board of Supervisors to task for its series of closed meetings on the Dulles rail project. It passed a resolution May 2 expressing "strong concern about the excessive secrecy" with which the board has proceeded.

Supervisors have met three times in closed session in recent weeks, once for more than two hours, to discuss their misgivings about the rail project, which will be built aboveground through Tysons Corner. The board has called for a tunnel under Tysons instead. Board members said they were receiving legal advice that made the executive sessions permissible.

Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D) has announced a public briefing on the rail project for June 4 and promised that everything covered behind closed doors will see the light. In answering criticism of the secrecy, he could not resist noting: "The Constitution was drafted in closed session."

Since removal of Dulles rail from the closed agenda, supervisors have had significantly less to discuss in private. At the April 30 and May 7 meetings, county attorneys estimated that the board needed no more than 20 minutes to conclude its business in executive session.