Hey BMGers! This was posted by Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green on the PCCC’s blog, The Daily Change, and is cross-posted here in hopes of great participation from the Blue Mass Group community! Also posted at The Huffington Post.
Today, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is proud to announce that we will host a first-of-its-kind Open Debate in the special election for Congress in Massachusetts.
All 5 Democrats running in the primary to replace now-Senator Ed Markey in the House of Representatives have agreed to participate in our Open Debate, where the public submits and votes on the questions. This is also Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s home congressional district.
Open Debates will be a game changer in our political process — ensuring that questions get asked that the public actually cares about. What starts in Massachusetts will hopefully become the norm for local, state, congressional, and even presidential debates in the future.
The debate will be held Saturday, August 10, at 11am Eastern and will be broadcast live online at OpenDebateQuestions.com. At this site, the public can submit questions, vote, learn about the candidates, and sign up for a reminder to watch the debate.
While this debate is a first, the idea of Open Debates is not new. During the 2008 presidential campaign, I was happy to work with Internet guru (now Harvard Professor) Lawrence Lessig to lead an amazing alliance of progressives, conservatives, and techies who came together around the Open Debate Coalition. This coalition included MoveOn, DailyKos, Arianna Huffington, Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions, RedState, Craig from Craiglist, Jimmy Wales from Wikipedia, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Personal Democracy Forum, Aaron Swartz, and many others.
Our coalition had two core Open Debate principles:
1. Debates are for the benefit of the public. Therefore, the right to speak about the debates ought to be “owned” by the public, not controlled by the media. [M]edia companies [should] release rights to presidential debate video to ensure that key moments can be legally blogged about, shared on YouTube, or otherwise shared without fear of legal repercussion.
2. “Town hall” Internet questions should be chosen by the people, not solely by the media…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.
The Open Debate coalition saw amazing success.
CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS all agreed to release video rights. (Fox did not, and then threatened to sue John McCain for using a debate clip.)
The McCain and Obama campaign both endorsed our open debate principles. Unfortunately, it was sufficiently late in the process that the Commission On Presidential Debates went forward with their debates as planned. This prompted calls from across the ideological spectrum for the old-school, top-down commission to be abolished.
But now… Open Debates are back! Poised by the important precedent of a Democratic and Republican presidential campaign backing Open Debate principles, we now will form a new precedent: Actually pulling off the first Open Debate. Massachusetts has the honors, and the nation will be watching watching as Will Brownsberger, Katherine Clark, Peter Koutoujian, Carl Sciortino, and Karen Spilka debate.
Join the fun and watch on August 10 at 11 am Eastern: OpenDebateQuestions.com
will the debate take place? Any way to attend the live event?
The debate is going to all happen online at OpenDebateQuestions.com
I believe the questions should be asked by only MA residents, with a preference to those who live in the district (like me). It’s a little embarrassing asking these candidates questions from people living 2,000 miles away, no?
Instead of giving you my email address, can those here just give the email from BMG. This way, BMG gets a little advertising and promo, as they deserve. Why do you need our full name?
Maybe limiting it to the district is technically infeasible, but certainly other states should be excluded.
Questions asked will be those voted on most by Massachusetts residents. If someone from another state happens to nominate a question, and lots of MA folks like it and vote for it, seems like a worthy question. Good synergy between local and national progressives. This debate will also help drive national attention to the MA-5 race.
But not excited to see these questions crowdsourced nationally so that we 1.) get repeats of questions that have already been addressed by the candidates, 2.) get questions that are more appropriate for a Presidential race, and 3.) get questions that are so general that they will inevitably result in useless answers.
Just posted a response to danfromwaltham that should apply to your question too.
Hope that’s helpful, and please feel free to submit questions to add to the mix, or vote on questions you like.
As long as the first question doesn’t relate to the candidates’ heritage I’ll be happy.