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The Austin American-Statesman has an open offer to host blogs for candidates for office from the Central Texas area.

Candidates range in aspiration from county clerk offices to that of Governor or the US House of Representatives.

A baker's dozen of 13 hopefuls have established blogs at the Statesman's website.

Genteel and informative? Depends on which candidate's blog you read.

Libertarian gubernatorial candidate James Werner wrote, "you can bet that my remarks will be more interesting than the tired answers of the mainstream candidates!"

That's in reference to his exclusion from a debate between candidates. He has agreed to answer each of the debate questions in his blog.

Plenty of roadwork and flesh-pressing will be part and parcel of candidate activities all over the country.

Adding a blog to the conversation presents a way for candidates to reach the voters who make time for a local newspaper website instead of the paper itself when catching up on the latest events.

"We're aggressively reporting the campaigns. But we thought the blogs would be an effective way of letting candidates say what they want to say to our readers," said Tim Lott, assistant managing editor for The American-Statesman's Web sites. "And our readers are smart enough to know the difference between candidate blogs and staff reporting."

Pluck Corporation, which is based in Austin, worked with The Statesman to set up the blogging platform.

This has been setup on Pluck's SiteLife technology solution for creating content.

The technology is in place to allow candidates to engage their possible constituents.

Now it is up to those candidates who aren't participating yet to join the conversation online. Because who knows?

Maybe the people want to vote for someone who is willing to be more accessible and responsive in their increasingly Internet-filled lifestyles.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.