Procedure and House Affairs committee  We have triple redundancy on every element that goes into the debate hall. I don't know if any of you saw the 1976 debate between Mr. Ford and Mr. Carter in Philadelphia or have seen video of it. The power failed, and there was a 27-minute silence on the stage. I needn't tell a

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The answer is absolutely, you have backup systems on backup systems.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. It's a privilege.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If you are not at 15% support in the polls four weeks before the election, I think history would show that there is virtually no chance you will be elected by the amount of the American public that would be needed for that. Many of you may be familiar with the experience of the L

Procedure and House Affairs committee  They are not.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I honestly don't have a number that would represent an accurate number once you take out all of the educational and other issues, but it's well under a million dollars.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Absolutely. We do studies on things ranging from production to.... As I said, there's a review of the candidate selection criteria. We talk to the debate venues and ask what happened that could be improved. We talk to law enforcement. We talk to the media. We talk to the moderato

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That is a question for the television networks, because the fact is the way we do this on a White House pool basis means that the signal that is transmitted, the actual broadcast, belongs to the White House pool. They are putting money into each debate in the form of the cameras,

Procedure and House Affairs committee  When I saw that phrase in someone's testimony, I underlined it. I couldn't agree more. If you create something that is large, you've already given a management to-do list that may run into the actual task at hand. I think the lighter you can make it.... I guess it can't get too m

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In our case, there has been a traditional observation of Labour Day as the start of the general election period. This means that we've never started the debates before the first week of September. Also, there is a general reluctance on the part of the candidates to ever have a

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In the last two cycles, we have done something different that's worked very well. The first and last presidential debates have been divided into six 15-minute segments. Each of those segments is on a topic that the moderators select and announce roughly 10 days before the debate.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In the reverse order, we choose the moderators, and we use three criteria in that process: number one, someone who is intimately familiar with the candidates and their positions on the issues; number two, someone who has had extensive experience in live TV; and number three, some

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. In fact, I would invite you all to go to our website, debatesinternational.org, and there you will see the members and the information exchange, which is the focus of our work. We have a number of South American entities involved. We did a lot of work in Argentina two years

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's something I wonder about myself. I had worked in the government for, I guess, 15 years when my name was submitted to the founding co-chairs as a possible staff director for the commission. Due to the fact that I had worked for individuals such as former ambassador Elliott