The time has come to update political debates for the digital age. Given the capabilities of today’s interactive media, it’s now possible to continue the conversation started in television debates and newspaper coverage. Using the Internet and online video, we can:

• Include ongoing public input on questions of interest;
• Give candidates more time and space to give thoughtful responses; and
• Enable voters to reward politicians with recognition when they choose substance over a sound bite.

If, according to the old saying, “all politics is local,” then the time has come to demonstrate that new, interactive media can invigorate local civic engagement around elections — moving from interest to involvement, from spectacle to civil society.

Personal Democracy Forum, with support from The Knight Foundation and in partnership with Google and YouTube, has created a platform to facilitate that involvement. It's called 10Questions. Here's how it works:

• Citizens can post text questions or video questions through YouTube for candidates in the 2010 midterm elections; each race has its own page where we aggregate questions posed for candidates in that specific race.
• Using Google technology, visitors to that site can vote questions up and down. After a set period of public engagement, the 10 top- voted questions in each race are posed to the candidates.
• Candidates then have the opportunity to post video responses, and voters rate those responses for completeness, directness, depth and substance — criteria that are sometimes hard to get out of politicians in the rapid-fire context of a live debate.

For the full story on the history and evolution of 10Questions, check out: 10Questions.com: Putting Voters in the Driver's Seat in 2010