Russell Berman 10:26 AM ET
Viewers unhappy with the questions asked at Monday night’s debate will have a shot to weigh in before Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton meet again on October 9: For the first time, the networks producing the town-hall style debate have agreed to accept questions voted on through the internet.
“This year’s presidential debate moderators will have a rich pool of voter-submitted questions they can draw on that carry greater weight because they are backed by votes from the American people,” Mike McCurry, a co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, said in a statement accompanying the announcement by the Open Debate Coalition.
The coalition tested out the format this spring during a debate between Representatives Alan Grayson and David Jolly, who were running in their respective party primaries for the U.S. Senate in Florida. The debate commission studied that debate and took note that both candidates praised the format, which featured more substantive questions on policy issues as opposed to those focused on electoral politics and the candidates’ personal foibles.
Presidential primary debates have featured
questions from YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other online fora in the past, but organizers believe the voting format will add “more moral weight” to the questions, said Adam Green, co-founder of the
Progressive Change Campaign Committee, one of the groups backing the effort. Other members of the Open Debate Coalition include the conservative activist
Grover Norquist, FreedomWorks, MoveOn, Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, and Numbers USA, which backs more restrictive immigration policy. “
There is a mutual frustration with presidential debate questions dominated by a handful of television personalities rather than average voters,” Norquist said.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/in-debate-two-the-questions-are-on-the-ballot/501791/
