Google Launches Google Moderator For Presidential Debates

A group of plugged-in politicos recently petitioned the Commission on Presidential Debates to open up the general election debates to the public.

In addition to asking that the CPD to make the video feed of the debates freely available, the group asked the commission to allow the public to select the questions to be posed to the candidates:

The two campaigns recently said of the October 7 debate, “In the spirit of the Town Hall, all questions will come from the audience (or Internet), and not the moderator.” We agree with the spirit of this statement. In order to ensure that the Internet portion of this debate is true bottom-up democracy, the format needs to allow the public to help select the questions in addition to asking them.

This cycle’s YouTube debates were a milestone for Internet participation in presidential debates. But they put too much discretion in the hands of gatekeepers. Many of the questions chosen by TV producers were considered gimmicky and not hard-hitting enough, and never would have bubbled up on their own.

This “bubble up” idea is the essence of the Internet as we know it. The best ideas rise to the top, and the wisdom of crowds prevails. We’d propose debate organizers utilize existing bubble-up voting technology and choose Internet questions from the top 25 that bubbled up. We ask you to instruct the October 7 debate planners to use bubble-up technology in this fashion.

One new tool the CPD might consider is Google's new Google Moderatortool, which was unveiled to the world late last week. Katie Jacobs Stanton, a member of Google's elections and moderator teams, described it this way: "It's a free tool which enables communities to submit and vote on questions for debates, presentations and events. This way, the best and most representative questions rise to the top."

Google already has a working example of how this would work up on its Google Moderator site, where 1,202 people have submitted 558 questions, and where they've also cast thousands of votes on which of the questions are the most important.

Of course, the CPD could also consider using Wired.com's Reddit widget, Digg, or TechPresident's 10Questions format.

There's no word yet on whether Tom Brokaw has even heard of these kinds of tools, or whether he intends to pay any attention to them before he moderates a townhall meeting between the presidential candidates and voters on October 7 in Nashville, Tennessee.

See Also:

• Campaigns Blow Off Voters During Final Stretch of Debates