Yes, 2013 is an off-off year. But there are still some elections taking place this year, most notably in Virginia (Nov. 5) and New Jersey (Oct. 16!).
At this point, it's unclear when the federal government will be up and running again. Signs seem to be pointing to "sooner rather than later," but then, signs have seemed to point at a number of things that ended up going totally off the rails with this Congress.
So here's a thought. We currently have a workforce of tens of thousands of frustrated, fired-up federal workers in these two states alone, with not a lot to do because they can't go to work and they're not receiving their paychecks. It seems like the majority of the public (and these folks especially, since they're in a position to see) knows exactly where the blame lies for this disaster.
That sounds to me like the 2013 elections are about to get a tidal wave of anti-Republican voters at the polls.
I used to be a state employee (I worked for a school district from 2006 to 2011), and if one political faction in my state legislature had used parliamentary tricks like this to try to undermine the will of the voters and shut the state down, you'd better bet my coworkers and I would be using that downtime to raise hell about it. And while I can't imagine government employees being a particularly low-turnout voter group to begin with... with their personal futures at stake and nowhere to be during the day, there would be high incentive and little impedance to making their voices heard at the polls.
EDIT: This post has been updated to include the actual election dates. The original version erroneously implied that both elections were in November.