You may have noticed the extra security getting added to these streets of Washington these days. Manhole covers being sealed, sniper roosts getting shut down, lengthier pat downs at points of entry.

Why the extra steps — a visiting dignitary from a member of the Coalition of the Willing? An impromptu civil defense exercise for the after-effects of NAFTA? Perhaps the media doing a dry run through for its inauguration salute to President Obama?

None of the above. It’s The Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet’s annual Politics Online Conference on Tuesday and Wednesday. The premier, must-attend political and Internet event of the year.

This year’s conference, we are thrilled and proud to say, features our New Media Strategies colleague Patrick Ottenhoff.

Patrick will lead a discussion on — drum roll, applause sign please — Political Cartography 2.0. Patrick runs the most excellent blog The Electoral Map.

We’re looking forward to Patrick’s presentation. Political cartography, alas, is a dying art. Like Yiddish.

Travel through the Midwest these days and you’ll see the decaying empty factories which once pumped out political maps by the hundreds, even thousands. Now they sit empty — a searing reminder of what happens when we outsource our political maps to Bangalore. Nowhere is that mourned louder than at Patrick Ottenhoff’s blog — where the memories of generations of Ottenhoffs who worked in the political map mills of Ohio, Michigan, and South Carolina are getting mustier and dustier with every passing day.

We think the government needs to subsidize political maps — or at least provide an electoral map tax credit. Until those glorious reforms happen — and yes, we will judge our presidential candidates on their capability to answer that 3 a.m. call on the red phone by saying, “Send in the maps” — we will settle for Patrick Ottenhoff’s discussion at the IPDI conference.

And we’ll continue to be flooded by cheap electoral map knock-offs, like this one by Jake Tapper.