It’s election time, and the candidates are already out there promoting their campaign platform. We the People look forward to meeting the candidates and hear about what they stand for, what they believe in, what they seek to work on if/when elected.
So, We the People invite candidates in our community to speak at our meetings, which is the first Monday of the month at 7 PM (details on the flyers we post). This is an excellent opportunity for candidates to not just take two or three minutes to quickly introduce themselves and ask for your support. We give them an opportunity to present their program in details, even using a Power Point Presentation, for up to 30 minutes.
Their campaign presentation will be followed by Questions from the audience. To make it most efficient and fair, and to avoid any lengthy or disagreeable turn of events, should someone disagree heavily with the candidate, we ask the audience to write down their questions on a card they receive at the door before the meeting and put it in the envelop they’re provided with.
One envelope. One question. All are put in a hat.
The club president will then ask the candidate to pull out, one by one, 25 questions which they will have 2 minutes max to answer.
Any questions in the hat that we did not get to will be emailed to the candidate after the meeting, and we ask them to email the answers back to We the People. The Qs and As will be posted on our website upon receipt along with the videos we took at the meeting.
This way there cannot be any doubt about what the candidate said, not stories can be made up falsely to put the candidate in a negative light. It’s straightforward, transparent, fair, and truthful.
By having the candidate pull questions themselves out of the hat, there can be no shadiness about “rigging the Qs and As” session.
It takes quite a bit of courage for a person to run for office, whether it is their first time or they are running for reelection. It can be brutal and taxing on the candidate, and it’s a tiring race to the finish line. We the People respect that, and we understand that. Therefore, we want all candidates, regardless of their political side they represent, to feel welcome fairly treated, and comfortable when they speak at our club.
We the People Club invite you to email us questions for the candidate, if you cannot attend the meeting and write down the questions to put in the hat yourself. Know that your questions will be presented one way or the other to the candidates.
Questions will not be presented in advance to any candidate. We firmly believe that when someone runs for office, it’s like a job interview essentially. They can prepare for it, but they will never receive the questions we ask at the meeting in advance.
We want it to be transparent and honest. That is also the reason the Meet the Candidate will be recorded, posted on YouTube and linked to our Website with all the questions and answered unfiltered and unedited.
If you have any questions you would like to ask a candidate, please email them using email address: [email protected] moving forward.
Thank you.