10Questions.com – Voice Your Question To The Candidates

Have you ever watched the presidential debates and felt as if the candidates hadn’t answered some of the questions? Or do you think there is a specific topic that should have been addressed but wasn’t? Well you, the citizen, can finally have a say in what to ask the candidates and if their answer is not complete you can voice your opinion about it. How? At 10Questions.

com. 10Questions.com believes that it is time to apply the advantages of the internet towards the presidential election. The internet gives everyone a voice and at 10Questions.com you can use your voice to get the information you want from the presidential candidates. This is how it works, you will have until November 14th to submit a video stating a question to the candidates. You can submit your video to YouTube, MySpace Yahoo Video, or Blip.tv. You can submit as many videos as you want and they can be as long as you want, but it is better to have them on the shorter side. Give a description of your video and tag it as 10Questions so others can find it and vote on it. On the site your video questions will be voted on and the best 10 will be submitted for the candidates to answer. The candidates will have to post their answers by December 15th. You can vote on their answers until December 31st and then the results will be published on the site. 10Questions.com is a great way to make use of the internet for the elections.

10Questions.com In Their Own Words

“When it comes to how we interview potential candidates for the job of President of the United States, it’s time to try something new: a truly people-powered forum that makes the most of what the internet has to offer.
Old-fashioned televised debates have their value, but TV has several inherent limits. Only a few people get to ask questions. The candidates have very little time to answer, forcing them to speak in canned sound-bites. And the audience has no way of providing meaningful feedback. If the candidate doesn’t answer the question, we have no way of pushing them to do so.
That’s why we’ve created 10Questions.com. This is an experiment in people-powered online democracy.
Unlike television debates, the 10Questions Presidential Forum makes full use of the web’s potential to expand participation in politics. Everyone has an opportunity to ask a question, and to rally support for their question being in the top ten. The candidates have plenty of time to formulate their answers, and can post in-depth replies. Finally, the community will be able to grade the candidates’ answers. With large numbers of people participating, the candidates will have an incentive to pay attention. Who knows, maybe we’ll even change the course of the election!
The 10Questions Presidential Forum is being produced by techPresident in cooperation with The New York Times editorial board, with support from MSNBC.com and sponsorship from a large, cross-partisan group of bloggers, online media and organizations. (For a full list, go to our Sponsors page.) Participation as a co-sponsor of 10Questions in no way implies that either techPresident, The New York Times or MSNBC.com endorses any of their activities or writings; nor does it imply their endorsement of our activities or writings, or those of other co-sponsors either. We all agree about one thing: It’s time for a people-powered approach to presidential forums, that puts you in the driver’s seat.”

Why 10Questions.com It Might Be A Killer

10Questions.com has a very patriotic interface. The site is well organized and easy to navigate. The site features countdowns for the end of each of the rounds which is great so people know the deadline to submit their videos. The homepage also features a video that explains the site and its objective. 10Questions.com is a great way for citizens to get the answers to the questions that concern them. 10Questions.com also gives the candidates time to think about and prepare their answer. They can make sure to be thorough and fully answer the question asked.

Some Questions About 10Questions.com

Sadly candidates can still avoid completely answering the questions asked because there is no follow up by the candidates after they submit their answers. 10Questions.com should have a third round where users can submit questions to the answers submitted by the candidates, and the candidates would have to respond to these follow up questions as well. 10Questions.com could feature more material on the candidates so that users could use this material to help them when they brainstorm their question.