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President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney take their seats for the third and final presidential debate October 22, 2012 at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida. | AFP/Getty Commission on Presidential Debates considers taking crowdsourced questions

The Commission on Presidential Debates will start discussions this week on the formats of the four general election debates this fall (three presidential, one vice presidential).

And while the commission, made up of former party officials, politicians and some academics, is keen to incorporate new technologies and even open debate formats, it is grappling with the question of how to seamlessly weave the traditional role of a moderator, as both a writer and presenter of questions, with that of a voting public that is used to having its voices heard on social media.

“We have had over the years what we call the town hall formats. So we’ve had a format in which average citizens ask questions of the candidates,” said Mike McCurry, White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton and co-chairman (along with former Republican National Committee chairman Frank Fahrenkopf) of the commission. “But social media gives you many more possibilities to engage more people in that sort of conversation. So we’ve been thinking how do we incorporate that into format of the debate. So we’ve had some good conversations on that.”

One of the possibilities the commission is watching is the “open debate format” proposed by the bipartisan Open Debate Coalition, in which the questions are crowdsourced. Everyday voters submit questions in advance, with the moderators choosing from the 30 questions with the greatest number of votes. The format is to be tested Monday night in a debate between Republican Rep. David Jolly and Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, who are vying for a Senate seat from Florida. The debate is to be moderated by Cenk Uygur, host and CEO of The Young Turks, and Benny Johnson, creative director of the Independent Journal Review.

“We want to see how that works and see if it’s really participatory and people really feel like they’ve been engaged in the conversation and then how do they incorporate it,” McCurry said. “The trick is, technologically, how do you incorporate — from the online discussion — how do you inject that into a moderator who then gets those questions in front of the candidates in a live debate? That’s kind of tricky, so we’re interested to see how that goes. We’re not saying we definitely would do something like that.”

One aspect McCurry is worried about is the audience. He noted that the audiences in the primary debates have become active participants, booing and cheering as though they’re at a rally. That won’t fly at a general election debate; McCurry said there’s a long-held belief that general election debates should be held in a nonpartisan environment.

But it won’t be easy.

“We are strict about creating an environment where everyone is there as an invited guest and just to be church mice in the congregation, not there to applaud,” McCurry said. “That may be a challenge for us, because, I think, as voters have watched primary debates, they’ve been pretty raucous, and they’ve been conducted in a partisan atmosphere like a rally. That’s not the way we do it. Making sure people understand [that] the environment for these debates will be different than primary debates will be a bit of a challenge for us.”

Moderators for the debates won’t be chosen for a few months, partly because McCurry said the commission wants to protect the moderators from a barrage of people trying to persuade them to ask certain questions or act a certain way. But that doesn’t mean the lobbying from the networks for their own anchors to moderate has not begun in earnest.

McCurry declined to comment on who specifically has been proposed, though the debates are traditionally moderated by the major broadcast and cable network anchors. While the moderators are traditionally from television, the commission is looking to diversify its moderators, not only by race and sex, but also potentially, by outlet.

“The explosion of sites on the Internet that are nontraditional sources, the move beyond traditional mainstream media is a very significant development. And so many people, particularly younger people, are getting information from nontraditional new sources. We certainly want to invite them into the process,” McCurry said.

Of course, all this planning can be upended by a candidate not choosing to attend a debate, as Donald Trump has proven twice thus far this cycle. Nothing is forcing candidates to participate in a debate other than tradition and public expectation.

“There’s always been a debate about debates, with negotiations and a lot of back and forth and haggling,” McCurry said. “Given that one of our candidates as a possible nominee is very proud of the fact that he’s good at negotiating deals, it might get complicated, but hopefully it will not be. But we’re a long ways from that point.”

