10Questions is a project of Personal Democracy Forum
We’re entering the final stretch of 10Questions.com, where the public gets to evaluate the answers posted by participating candidates and vote on whether they’ve actually answered the question. Arguably, this is the most powerful piece of 10Questions, because we’re creating a transparent feed-back loop.
All too often, candidates for elective office dodge answering questions from reporters and the general public. That’s politics in a scarcity-of-media environment. You have to stay “on-message” and speak in sound-bites if the only avenue you have of reaching the public is broadcast media, where air-time is scarce. And when candidates avoid answering the question, the public usually lacks any way of changing their behavior.
But right now, you can dive in and see how top candidates in races around the country have chosen to answer the questions that voters deemed the most important to ask. For example, here’s Senator Barbara Boxer and challenger Carly Fiorina answering a question about whether they support Prop 19, the voter initiative to legalize marijuana:
Go here to vote on whether you think they answered the question.
Here’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Jan Brewer in Arizona, answering a question about health care coverage for the unemployed:
Go here to vote on that answer, as well as on the other responses submitted by Brewer.
So far 14 candidates have responded to 10Questions.com, posting a total of 131 video responses. Most of them have been diligent about answering all ten questions in some detail, though Gov. Roy Barnes has the best reply of all, to a question about whether he’d sign a bill legalizing Sunday alcohol sales: