The Web on the Candidates

• California Rep. George Miller is back with the second installment of his Ask George series, in which citizens can use video, blogs, SMS, or Twitter to ask Miller about the Iraq war. The submissions are aggregated at Community Counts, where participants can vote for the best questions. Miller then answers the most popular questions in his videos. In the new video, Miller responds to questions raised on a blog created by residents in his congressional district in California. Even though it's not produced by a presidential candidate, we continue to report on this project because it offers an example of how -- with a little ingenuity and desire -- politicians can use all corners of the web to engage voters.
• Yesterday, NPR's Talk of the Nation covered the upcoming YouTube/CNN debate and the role of the Internet in the election. Listen in CNN executive producer David Bohrman, MIT's Henry Jenkins, and yours truly for a discussion about how to include the YouTube community in the debates and how the web is impacting the election.

The Candidates on the Web

• During his stint as the unofficial YouTube advisor to the stars, James Kotecki has interviewed Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Mike Huckabee, and Ron Paul
  , and today he catches a slightly bigger fish. Just before beginning his "One Road to America" tour earlier this week, John Edwards took time to talk to Kotecki via phone (with cameras rolling, of course). After asking Edwards about poverty, global warming, and China, Kotecki gets to what's really on our minds: the upcoming CNN/YouTube Democratic debate. James asks how Edwards is going to prepare for the debates and Edwards tells him that "what I want to do is expand the opportunity for people to ask questions, so for 30 minutes after the televised debate we're actually gonna do an online forum." He explains that after the debate viewers will be able to submit questions on Edwards' site, or they can text the word "debate" to 30644 and submit their questions that way. This is a smart move by Edwards' team to take advantage of the publicity generated by the debates, and use their unorthodox format to push Edwards' credentials as tech-savvy candidate.
• Two weeks ago we reported that, Christian Ferry, John McCain's eCampaign Director, had been let go from the campaign. Now he's back, this time serving as deputy campaign manager. Eyebrows were raised when Ferry started posting again on the McCain blog last week.

In Case You Missed It...

Morra Aarons will be in South Carolina next week to cover the CNN/YouTube debate, and as political director of BlogHer, she wonders if the submitted questions skew too male.

Ask George | George Miller | John Edwards | John McCain
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