FREE WHITEWATER

How to Build a Better Candidate Forum

Posted originally 2.16.16. Reposted 3.8.18. A private local organization, in the habit of hosting candidate debates forums, may freely follow its national organization’s practices. Fair enough.

Whitewater, however, would do better if she adopted better standards. There are two easy ways that Whitewater can make her candidate forums much better.

Release Candidate Statements Before the Forum Takes Place. It’s a poor practice to hold a forum on March 10th, for example, but post candidates’ completed questionnaires “by the end of the day, Monday, March 12.”

Those attending a forum should be able to read, and ask questions based on, the candidates’ prepared statements. Releasing statements after the forum deprives residents of an informative written statement of a candidate’s positions before he or she speaks.

Releasing candidates’ statements before the forum is useful in a second way. If statements are released before a forum, then there can be no possibility – even as a suspicion – that candidates’ written answers might be altered at a candidate’s behest to adjust for political advantage after the forum.

Statements released before the forum assure those asking questions will be better informed, and prevent the possibility of pressure for alteration afterward.

Hold the Forum Even if Some Candidates Cancel. A policy that requires cancellation of an entire event if one candidate in a single contested race cancels favors gamesmanship from a better-know candidate and short-changes the community on information about every other candidate.

If a better-known candidate in a contested race knows that by canceling (for whatever reason) he or she can prevent a lesser-known candidate from speaking, that familiar candidate has an incentive to cancel.  In this way, the familiar candidate could deny a needed forum to a lesser-known one, and to all the community.

Worse – and stranger still – is the absurd claim that if a candidate in a contested race cancels, then the entire forum should be canceled, including for candidates in other races:

“Although only the Councilmember at Large seat is contested, the League invited the uncontested candidates to share their views as well. However, should either one of the two candidates running for the At Large seat choose not to participate, the forum will be cancelled. The League has a long tradition of not supporting “empty-chair” debates or forums because any candidate in a contested race, who appears alone, has the distinct advantage of presenting partisan views and comments without challenge.”

Were those invited candidates in uncontested races able legitimately to speak? If so, then there’s nothing about the absence of candidates in different races that would make the invited, uncontested candidates’ remarks more or less legitimate. If the invited candidates in uncontested races were not able legitimately to speak in the first place, they never should have been invited.

(Needless to say, a properly organized forum of sound principles would have found each candidate’s participation legitimate.)

Finally, the use of partisan here is odd (to the point of silliness). First, Whitewater’s local races are, by law, non-partisan.

Second, in the ordinary definition of the term –  as support for a party, cause, faction, person, or idea – all candidates in all cases are partisan. Honest to goodness, they’re all supporting some discernible thing, aren’t they?  Even if they’re supporting their own sense of entitlement (!), that’s a kind of partisan view.

Worse, of course, is a policy that rewards a candidate who cancels by allowing him or her to stifle everyone else of information. If the worry is uncontested views, it’s the canceling candidate who creates that situation, to everyone else’s detriment. Candidates  declining a forum shouldn’t have the power to cancel all other presentations.

A better practice would issue candidate statements before a forum, and would hold a forum for any and all candidates (and residents) wishing to attend.

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The Phantom Stranger
6 years ago

Mr. Adams: you tell it like it is.

The Phantom Stranger
6 years ago

Totally agreed: their questionaire answers should’ve been released PRIOR to this Saturday’s forum. I believe it IS now available at the Daily Union’s site.