In the recent City Council election in Boulder we had an online debate. Over 55 minutes we had 12 candidates simultaneously answering 11 questions at the rate of 1 every 5 minutes.
Ok, so how did the online debate go? Well the short answer is both great in that every participant and many voters said it was the best debate of the campaign and bad in that it did not impact the outcome of the election. So lets dive in to the specifics.
The Answers
First off, this was arguably the single best debate of the campaign. There were numerous positive comments as well as numerous emails I received. This included the participants who all found it very good, to candidates who did not participate and told me afterwords they wish they had, to voters who found it a fantastic resource.
The combination of the questions asked and the 5 minutes to respond format led to very illuminating answers. All issue statements by candidates are carefully designed to appeal to as many as possible while upsetting as few as possible. With the unlimited time candidates have to polish their issue papers they all tend to be vague and similar.
In the in-person debates appearance, presentation, etc tend to take center stage and what is said is a distant second. And because of this again the spoken answers tend to be general with an emphasis on presentation of those general answers. Another problem with the in-person debates, at the local level, is the questions from most of the groups that put on the debate tend to be completely predictable. One of the things that made this debate work so well was that a lot of the questions were not predictable and not ones heard before.
On the flip side, this format where it was solely what they wrote did tend to bring out specific answers, more specific than I had thought would happen. I don't know if it is the fact that it is written or the time constraint but the combination got quite a bit of details out of the candidates. It may be that with the clock ticking step 1 is to get the specifics in and there is no time for step 2 to pretty it up and insure no one will be upset.
The Format
The format worked great. You can see the debate rules here. But the bottom line is I would not change a thing. The candidates told me afterward that they were barely able to get out a coherent answer when it was time to answer the next one. Yet reading their answers without exception they are all well written and complete. So enough time to answer, but with the tight time constraints that force answers from the heart.
And this debate was based totally on ideas. No presentation, no candidate appearance, no candidate diction, none of that had any impact. It was all in what they said. This makes the online debate format unique from the other events in a campaign. And unique in a way that provides some information about the candidates not found in the other venues.
I am so glad that only half the candidates (12) participated. I never had to cut and paste so fast in my life. Running it the way I did at my end, copying replys from email and pasting to my blog, 12 is the maximum and that required two screens and my wife sitting next to me telling me when I missed something. More than 12 requires a different mechanism at the moderator end. But if it is 2 or 3 candidates, then doing it by hand in a blog works fine.
The Outcome
The final election results had the 7 Sierra Club endorse-es winning. And that is the establishment in Boulder. What is real interesting about the results is the 7th place (win) beat the 8th place (loss) by over 50%. In other words, the election was decided by the establishment, not by the campaign. So nothing, not the online debate or any other event had an impact on who won.
With that said, among the candidates not in the anointed 7. With one exception, every online debate participant beat all of the non-participants. And the one non-participant who did do well finished after 3 of the participants even though he had numerous endorsements.
So where voters were making their own decision rather than basing their vote on endorsements, the online debate made a substantial difference. In an election where the outcome is not pre-ordained, a debate in this format can make a substantial difference.
In Conclusion
I think every election should have one of these debates (even the presidential primary). They provide a unique set of information about each candidate. The candidates enjoy it as it is different from the normal formats and lets them discuss their views. And the voters find it valuable.
I am now proposing that the 3 candidates running for the Democratic nomination in CO-2 participate in an online debate. I am hoping this catches on elsewhere.