Edited by Ronald A. Faucheux

Standards and Guidelines for the Sponsorship of Political Candidate Debates in Congressional, State, and Local Elections

With Special Contributions from David Beiler, Janet Brown, Diana Carlin, Michael Cornfield, Peter Francia & Mark Watts

For years, there was no commonly accepted standards or guidelines for political debates that provide practical models for civic, media and political organizations to follow...until The Debate Book. It is the objective of this book to assist in establishing fair and commonly accepted guidelines for political debates below the presidential level and to encourage their use in all federal, state and local elections. These standards include a series of recommendations and helpful tips based on widespread input to assist in sponsoring and organizing a variety of debate formats and models.

The Debate Advisory Standards Project, which produced The Debate Book, was created to improve candidate debates by developing nonpartisan standards for debates and the sponsorship of debates. The idea is to encourage substantive debates with fair formats and wide audiences, and to do so in a comprehensive way that is unrelated to the agenda of any candidate, party or ideology. The nonpartisan project reached out to participants in the political process, the broadcast industry and the civic community to get broad-based input on issues affecting debate sponsorship. Voters across the nation were surveyed to determine citizen attitudes on candidate debate matters. Input has been sought from a wide variety of objective professionals, distinguished academics and public figures as well as political participants representing numerous major and nonmajor political parties and ideological persuasions. The Debate Advisory Standards Project was funded through a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts and sponsored by the Center for American Politics and Citizenship at the University of Maryland, Dr. Peter L. Francia, Principal Investigator.