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TechPresident, a blog spun off from the Personal Democracy Forum, is joining forces with the New York Times Editorial Board and MSNBC.com to launch the website 10Questions.com. At 10Questions.com, the public will be able to post video questions to the candidates for U.S. President, and vote up the best questions of the group. Candidates will then be able to answer in detail and without the time limits imposed by traditional major media debate events.

The videos questions can be submitted through YouTube and MySpace, much like the YouTube/CNN and MySpace/MTV debates, but also via Yahoo and Blip.TV. Users simply tag their video with the word “10Questions”, and it’s automatically picked up by the 10Questions team.

Voting on the videos ends on November 14th, and then questions are submitted to all the major candidates (although TechPresident nor 10Questions indicate the criteria of what constitutes a ‘major candidate’).

There doesn’t seem to be any procedure for follow-up after the video responses are submitted by the candidates, which may allow for the traditional question-dodging we’ve all come to love in mainstream debates. This continuation of the trend of bringing the debate online does, however, offer candidates a unique opportunity to present their new-media savvy side.

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User comment: By: Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

The correction has been made on the spin-off bit. I mis-read the masthead on that, and my apologies. I'm looking through the FAQ now, as I did before I wrote the article, located on 10Questions, and I'm not seeing anything in relationship to what major party candidates qualifications must be to participate, although now I see the question now about Third Party Candidates. Early on in the primary and polling process, several folks were discounting so-called second-tier and third-tier major party candidates from participating in debates and polls, and I didn't see information specifically addressing that issue, when I scanned the FAQ. I'm happy to hear that you're including as many candidates as is feasible.

User comment: By: Micah sifry

Mark-- Thanks for covering the launch of 10Questions.com. A few minor corrections: techPresident.com doesn't bill itself as the "personal democracy forum"--techPresident.com is a blog spinoff from Personal Democracy Forum, which is an annual conference on how tech is changing politics, now headed into our 5th year. No biggie. More important, we do actually have a procedure for dealing with the candidate responses to the top ten user-voted video questions, which is that as the candidate responses are posted, users will have the ability to vote up on down on whether they actually answered the question. Obviously, we can't force the candidates to skip the usual question-dodging, but we think the introduction of this feedback loop will help. Lastly, as for what makes a candidate "major"--we're including all the Democratic and Republican candidates, and will also include responses from third-party candidates if their party has a line on the ballot in enough states to hypothetically win a electoral college majority. (That's covered in our FAQ, which maybe you didn't read.) Micah Sifry Editor, techPresident.com

User comment: By: Angelos

The Web 2.0 infrastructure is providing a number of platforms to make the 2008 campaign an election of firsts. In addition to enhanced connectivity through online video - citizen journalism projects like OffTheBus are providing hyperlocal commentary to contrast the traditional mass media machines trailing candidates.

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