How Many Questions Do You Have For Your Political Candidates? Join the 10Questions Project and Get Answers!

Do you want to see more focus on sexual and reproductive justice issues in political campaigns?  Do you want to know more about the positions of candidates across the spectrum on such issues as comprehensive sexual health education, women's rights, the right to determine whether, when, and with whom to have children, and the right to access basic reproductive and sexual health services (such as testing and treatment for breast and cervical cance, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, information on and access to birth control an

Do you want to see more focus on sexual and reproductive justice issues in political campaigns?  Do you want to know more about the positions of candidates across the spectrum on such issues as comprehensive sexual health education? Women’s rights? 

You can use the widget on the right side of any inside pages of Rewire, including this one, to submit your questions to candidates. Simply choose the state and race to which you would like to submit your question. You can submit your question to as many races as you’d like.

The top 10 Questions from each race will be posed to the candidates in that race. Voting ends on September 14th. To browse through questions and vote for those that you like or against those you do not like, click on the View Questions link at the top of the widget.

Candidate positions on the rights of all individuals to determine whether, when, and with whom to have children? Their positions on the right to access basic reproductive and sexual health services (such as testing and treatment for breast and cervical cance, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, information on and access to birth control and other basic services)?  What about justice concerns in the immigration debate? Health care reform? Medicaid? Stigma and discrimination? The effects of environmental toxins on sexual and reproductive health?  Marriage equality?

Then get involved with the 10Questions Project.

Rewire is now partnering with the Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) in an effort to expand citizen access to political campaigns, using the internet and online video. 

Obviously the list is potentially endless.  But we encourage you to work with us to push for as many questions as possible on our shared agendas.

The basic principle of this effort rests on the old adage that “all politics is local,” and seeks to use new, interactive media to invigorate local civic engagement around elections — “moving from interest to involvement, from spectacle to civil society.”

As the 10Questions Project creators note:

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.

PDF created 10Questions with support from The Knight Foundation and in partnership with Google and YouTube. Together they have created a platform to facilitate your involvement in determining what questions politicians need to answer. The goals of 10Questions.com are to:

  • 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.

Here’s how it works:

  • Citizens–that means you–can post text questions or video questions through YouTube for candidates in the 2010 midterm elections; each race has its own page where questions are aggregated and posed to 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.

This process gives each one of us the chance to get answers to our questions in any one of the 2010 midterm elections. As the process moves forward, we’ll help track voting on questions about sexual and reproductive justice and ask you to help make sure they get to the top of the list.

But we can’t do it without you.

So get involved. Ask your candidates–right, left, red, blue or purple–their positions on these issues. Make it known when you don’t think their answers are complete or they avoid a question. Hold them accountable.

It’s all about democracy.

The power, and the responsibility, lies with each of us, and all of us.