We all have questions for those fighting it out in the 2008 presidential election. Now VivirLatino, along with other blogs, is giving you a chance to ask those questions, in your own voice, with your own words. We are sponsoring 10 Questions. We want you, our readers to create your own video based questions to the candidates.

With the internet becoming a bigger and more powerful medium, it only makes sense that it be used to put the people that want to run the U.S. on the spot. Ask them the questions that don’t get asked on the televised debates. Call them out on something they’ve said. Ask for clarification on an issue beyond the canned sound-bites. The Latino community has been especially left out of the loop. Republicans can’t be bothered to speak to us, about us and Democrats talked about how our values were their values but little else at the Univision forum.

Through 10 Questions
everyone has an opportunity to ask a question, and to rally support for their question being in the top ten. The candidates have plenty of time to formulate their answers, and can post in-depth replies. Finally, the community will be able to grade the candidates’ answers. With large numbers of people participating, the candidates will have an incentive to pay attention.

This isn’t small time. There are some heavy players involved including The New York Times editorial board, with support from MSNBC.com and sponsorship from a large, cross-partisan group of bloggers, online media and organizations.

How This Works

The 10Questions Presidential Forum is divided into two rounds. During the first round, which will run from October 17 to November 14, anyone with access to YouTube, MySpace Yahoo Video, or Blip.tv can submit a video question. To enter, upload your video question to one of these sites and tag it “10questions.” Be sure to give it a descriptive title so others can find it. And if you want, add additional tags that describe it further. The questions should be primarily in English. However if you would like to submit a question in Spanish or Portuguese, make sure you do it in that language and English (we’re all about bilingualism here).

During round one, videos bearing the tag “10questions” will be collected on the main page where anyone can vote for or against them. At the close of round one, there will be an audit of the top vote-getters, after which the top ten videos will be presented to the candidates.

During round two, which will begin November 17 and end December 31, the candidates will be asked to post their replies to the top ten questions, and you get to vote on their replies. The candidates will have until December 15 to post their answers; you’ll have until December 31 to vote on them. At the end of this round, the ratings will be audited and the final results announced.

You can submit as many videos as you want, at whatever length you prefer, though we recommend keeping your questions brief since that will probably improve their chances of being viewed, and voted upon, by more people. Also, you can vote on as many videos as you like, but you can vote only once for each video.

Video entries should be questions for all the 2008 American Presidential candidates as a group, and suitable for a general audience. That means no cursing or insults. Basically follow the VL comment policy and you should be all good!

I’ll be making my own video question and posting it here for all to see. If you submit a video let us know. We’ll post it here!!!

So get to asking those questions you’ve been itching to ask.

Go to 10 Questions for more info or if you have questions.