"It's impossible," says a naysayer to cartoon version of Sean Tevis, a Democratic candidate for state house in Kansas's District 15. "Impossible?," he responds. "This is the Internet!" Tevis, running to represent the city of Olathe in the northeastern part of the state, is raising much-needed campaign cash by using a web comic styled after xkcd, a cartoon series popular with the geekiest of geeks. (h/t Carlo Scannella) The strip, called "Running for Office: It's Like A Flamewar with a Forum Troll, but with an Eventual Winner," puts out a call for 3,000 contributors to kick in $8.34.

This is the Internet, indeed. At last update, at 8:18 CST this morning, a reported 3,612 people had come together to fund the Kansan's campaign. New panels tacked on to the comic have the naysayer asking "Who are these people who are donating?" Cartoon Tevis: "I know who they are...backup." No candidate for state rep in Kansas, according to Tevis, had ever attracted more than 650 or so donors.

How'd it happen? Boing Boing, the arbiter of online culture, posted a link to Tevis's site yesterday. Tevis, who, according to his campaign bio, is an information architect at a cooling technology company in Overland Park, is running against Arlen Siegfreid, a Republican elected in 2003 with 55% of the vote.

The comic succeed in pulling in cash and attention from places far beyond Kansas. It's a siren song to geeks. According to the strip, Tevis is running on "open government, personal privacy, real science standards, an end to regressive taxation on those who can least afford it, and," in a nod to net neutrality, "putting someone in office who understands by the Internet cannot and should not be censored." Also namechecked are nuggets of Internet culture like downmodding and rick rolling. In addition to the Boing Boing posting, it was Dugg just over 1,400 times.

Tevis also keeps up a blog -- and a rather frank one for someone running for public office. In a recent post, Tevis talked about throwing away the majority of the issue questionnaires PACs are sending his way.

Two weeks ago, Washington State Democrat Darcy Burner, a candidate in the eight congressional district, ran out of her burning home wearing a shirt reading </war> -- xml code for "end war." It was a secret handshake (though, in Burner's case, an unintentional one), a way of reaching out to geeks. Fundraising took off, and Burner's campaign raised more than $80,000 in the first 24 hours after the fire.

In Tevis's case, all the online attention was enough to get the site Boing Boinged, or shut down. Tevis himself joined in the Boing Boing comments, saying: "Thank you so much for your warm and generous support. The site is being hammered way above what I expected." He wasn't complaining; all that attention is a very good thing.

Oh, why the ask for donations of $8.34? It's simple math. Tevis explains that his campaign needs $26,000 by July 26th to be able to compete with Siegfreid. Three thousand people chipping in $8.34 meets that goal while hitting the sweet spot of affordability. It was an ambitious approach, especially considering that just 6,300 total people cast ballots in the district in 2006. (The Democratic candidate that cycle lost pulled in 2,822 of those votes.) The xkcd call was an attempt -- and a seemingly successful one -- to rely upon the generosity of micro-donors everywhere.

That said, bigger donations are welcomed, of course. Chipping in $500 gets you "a DVD video from Sean Tevis' mom telling you how wonderful you are, because you are." It's difficult to resist kicking the geek a little cash.