*Search and vote for questions about issues that are important to you! The “town hall” debate will feature questions from the Internet – ABC and CNN moderators agreed to consider the Top 30 questions voted up on this site! Watch the debate right here on Sunday, Oct. 9, at 9pm EDT to find out if they chose yours!
* https://presidentialopenquestions.com/
Link to the site with potential questions for the debate Sunday night. Vote for the questions you’d like to hear the candidates answer.
I don’t know who the “Open Debate Coalition” is but the whole concept here is kind of depressing on several different levels.
The poor thinking behind many of the questions is pretty sad, usually tipped off by equally incompetent writing. Like the one that starts off with the “obvious” (to the question submitter) premise that every immigrant to the US costs Americans money and jobs, so, like, what are you gonna do about it? (On this basis, America has been going downhill, losing money and jobs, since at least 1620 when the Mayflower landed and the first immigrant leechers disembarked.) Or the genius who equates H1B visas with “genocide”. Or another “obvious” one: the 1st and 2nd Amendments are “under attack” – so what are you gonna do about that one? It appears that a lot of Trump supporters are posting questions here, or else they’ve opened up the questioning to residents of mental institutions.
That said, there are some good ones. And that’s a problem, too, because publication of posted questions and their popularity ratings seems to go against the principle that the candidates shouldn’t have access to the questions in advance. This is more like an “open book of all possible questions” that the candidates’ handlers will undoubtedly find valuable when they prep them with canned responses.
Just my reaction to seeing this site. It might have made a lot more sense for interested voters to simply email their questions, and debate staff could then tally up the common themes and form them into well-worded thoughtful questions. It could be done fairly efficiently with automated assistance – after all, many of the responses that people get to emails of complaint, or the way that many resumes are handled, are completely automated with no human intervention at all, at least in the initial stages. This seems like a primitively stupid way of getting voter input.
There are too many questions to be useful, many of them are either poorly worded and/or obvious trolling of a particular candidate. Sorry to insult the common man, but most people just aren’t capable of composing a crisply worded fair and tough question. Better to let the people submit their thoughts to be reworded by people who can write competently and then vote on the properly worded questions.
I’d sure like to mention this or that government action to Donald Trump, and ask him to “explain why our tax dollars – sorry; my tax dollars – should be spent on this.”
Oy. After reading those questions I fear we deserve Trump… Although I would like to see them both “explain how the internet works”. That would be good for some humor value, at least.
One thing I noticed is that I clicked on the link twice, and the 2nd time it was a completely different set of questions. Are they constantly shifting the most popular ones to the top?
Don’t be such an elitist, Bob! (Just kidding. I agree with you completely).
Easy. The Internet is a series of tubes. We also learned from the late Ted Stevens (R, AK) that the Internet is also a thing that can be sent from place to place, to wit: “… an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why?” Why, indeed. Probably because the Internet ran into some cats. I don’t think even Trump could explain it this eloquently. Or maybe he could.
They aren’t sorted either by popularity or by submission date, so I would guess that the ones at the top are the most recent to receive a vote.
I don’t see a problem with any of the first page of top voted questions. They are all well written. I will say they make Clinton look better, but that’s to be expected.
[ol]
[li]Would you support requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales?[/li][li]How will you ensure the 2nd Amendment is protected? [/li][li]Do you support expanding, and not cutting, Social Security’s modest benefits?[/li][li]Would you support term limits for members of Congress and the Supreme Court?[/li][li]Would you act to repeal Citizens United?[/li][li]As president, What are the steps you will take to address climate change?[/li][li]How do you plan to make healthcare affordable for EVERYONE?[/li][li]Social Security is not an entitlement or a handout. How are you going to save it?[/li][li]What measures would you propose to reduce or blunt gerrymandering?[/li][li]What’s your plan to tackle the large public health crisis: Alzheimer’s disease?[/li][li]What will you do to make sure the ultra rich pay their fair share of taxes?[/li][li]What is your plan to combat climate change & build a green economy?[/li][li]How will you advance anti-discrimination laws for LGBT+ Americans?[/li][li]How will you support a free and open internet? [/li][li]How do you plan to bring the US back to the forefront of education?[/li][li]What will you do to ensure greater transparency and accountability in government?[/li][li]Will you commit to keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers?[/li][li]If elected, would you support the decriminalization or legalization of marijuana?[/li][li]How will you help 42 million Americans facing food insecurity?[/li][li]What will you do to address the structural inequalities in criminal justice?[/li][li]If you deport my parents, what happens to me? [emotional question–how will they respond][/li][li]Is Climate Change a national security issue? Why or why not?[/li][li]What is your proposal to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure?[/li][li]Will you reduce support for animal agriculture to counter climate change?[/li][li]What will you do to protect the rights of Native Americans and their land?[/li][/ol]
Sure, they’re not in the order I think they are important, but I think they’re all rather good questions. Sure, I did fix a capitalization/punctuation error in maybe 3 of them, but they are otherwise well formed.
Survival of the fittest seems to work pretty well, especially when similar questions can “die off,” i.e., be merged. I’d have no problem with a debate made up of these questions.
I went back and had another random look at the questions. And now I’m even more depressed … the stupid, it hurts! (I have intentionally not made any corrections.)
[ul]
[li]Why does the US help other countries with any and everything? Yet were in debt. We seem to always send money, food, and medicines to other countries but yet we have children going to bed hungry every night …[/li]
[li]Do you support the idea of borders and sovereignty or a borderless world union?[/li]
[li]What will you do to give Americans more freedom?[/li]
[li]Will you reverse President Obama’s Executive Orders? [All 235 of them!][/li]
[li]Replace our nuclear weapons with conventional ones laster guided unilaterally? [No, I have no idea what it means either!][/li]
[li]How is it possible that a government employee (dead broke after leaving office) is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars?[/li]
[li]How much money did you inherit from your father?[/li]
[li]Do you believe autism is caused by immunizations?[/li]
[li]Which of the Apostle Paul’s letter is your favorite and why?[/li]
[li]Do you believe in God?[/li]
[li]Voting fraud is now a widespread fact in many states, will you support voter ID? … Widespread fraud is now a fact and not the myth democrats have said for years.[/li]
[li]What are your thoughts on protecting the boarder and illegal immigrants?[/li]
[li]Should God-fearing Americans get the same pass and allowances as illegal aliens?[/li]
[li]How can you be for children and support abortion?[/li]
[li]With all of the $ raised/donated to Haiti, why are they still in such bad shape?[/li]
[li]How is it that our government provides food stamps, medicaid and free child care to refugees and immigrants, but will not help our own citizens who work, but can’t buy food nor Obamacare?[/li]
[li]If the Supreme court subpoena’d you multiple times. Would you just ignore it?[/li]
[li]Why are we still a member of the UN, and why do we have to pay the most dues?[/li][/ul]
I did a search for “loans” hoping to find a query about Trump’s debt to foreign banks. It was there, but questions regarding the student loan hustle vastly out voted it. At least that one is a valid topic.
Also seen, a question about protecting atheists from religion. I didn’t look, but I’d expect a question about how the government can force atheists to church would get more traction.
Overall, the sad situation shows we need a series of televised civics class Q&A sessions more than a presidential debate. One of the candidates needs to attend one, too.
