Got a burning question for the presidential candidates?

by Carmen Van Kerckhove
I’m excited to announce that Racialicious has been invited to be one of the blogs sponsoring 10 Questions, an experiment in people-powered online democracy. Given our recent discussion on Addicted to Race about the mainstream blogosphere’s tendency to overlook bloggers of color, I’m particularly happy that Racialicious will be part of this exciting initiative. I’m also glad to see some of our blog friends as sponsors: VivirLatino, CultureKitchen, just to name a couple.

Here’s more about the initiative, from 10 Questions:

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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.)

How This Works

The 10Questions Presidential Forum is divided into two rounds. During the first round, which will run from October 17 to November 14, anyone with access to YouTube, MySpace Yahoo Video, or Blip.tv can submit a video question. To enter, upload your video question to one of these sites and tag it “10questions.” Be sure to give it a descriptive title so others can find it. And if you want, add additional tags that describe it further.

During round one, videos bearing the tag “10questions” will be collected on the main page where anyone can vote for or against them. At the close of round one, there will be an audit of the top vote-getters, after which the top ten videos will be presented to the candidates.

During round two, which will begin November 17 and end December 31, the candidates will be asked to post their replies to the top ten questions, and you get to vote on their replies. The candidates will have until December 15 to post their answers; you’ll have until December 31 to vote on them. At the end of this round, we will audit the ratings and announce the final results.

You can submit as many videos as you want, at whatever length you prefer, though we recommend keeping your questions brief since that will probably improve their chances of being viewed, and voted upon, by more people. Also, you can vote on as many videos as you like, but you can vote only once for each video.

Video entries should be questions for all the 2008 American Presidential candidates as a group, and suitable for a general audience. We reserve the right to reject videos if they are obscene or inappropriate. If you want to learn more about 10Questions, check out our FAQ.