Candidate Forums
Elections are another important opportunity for community members to influence policies and make their voices heard. Candidate forums offer an opportunity for community members to learn about candidates’ views. Even if community members cannot vote, it is important for them to hear from their potential representatives and make their presence known to candidates.
Credit: Joyce Xi
CAA, in collaboration with CCSJ, organized a candidate forum for city council representatives for the district that includes Chinatown. We intentionally focused the theme of the forum on community safety to allow candidates to dive more deeply into a priority issue. We had over 100 attendees, with a large portion identifying Cantonese or Mandarin as their primary language.
Our feedback survey revealed that 88% of respondents said the forum helped them feel more informed about the candidates and that 76% were very likely to vote. Fourteen percent of respondents said that they cannot vote, underscoring the importance of providing civic engagement opportunities for people who cannot vote, but want their voices to be heard and reflected in policy.
Main Components
Live simultaneous interpretation
We provided translation equipment and live simultaneous interpretation so that more time could be spent on candidate remarks. We also provided translators with a cheat sheet of pre-translated phrases related to community safety and policies that might come up in the forum. This made the translation smoother and less taxing for the interpreters.
Random speaking order
For fairness, we predetermined the speaking order for each question randomly. This ensured that candidates were not favored over the other by always having one candidate provide the opening or closing answer.
Community question and answer
While candidates answered questions that we created, we asked community members to submit questions for the community question and answer portion. The question selection team included bilingual staff and topic area experts. The team tallied the questions to select the most popular questions to pose to the candidates. We also disqualified questions that appeared to favor one candidate over another as candidate supporters and campaign staff could have also submitted questions in support of their candidates.
Campaign materials
We allowed candidates to place campaign materials on a table within the event location and asked candidates not to distribute materials within the location itself. This helped to keep the forum from appearing to favor one candidate over another.
Keys to Success
Sharing questions and speaker order with candidates in advance
Given the importance and complexity of the topic, we wanted to use the time in the forum as efficiently as possible. We shared questions (other than the community-sourced questions) in advance, so that candidates could deliver the most cogent and informative responses within a short speaking time. We also shared speaking orders with candidates in advance, so that they could be prepared for the random ordering and to instill confidence that we were implementing the forum fairly.
Tight time-keeping and moderation
Keeping on schedule was important for respecting the time of both community members and candidates. We also know that attention spans can flag significantly after an hour to an hour and a half of speeches. In addition to sharing questions with candidates in advance, we paid close attention to keeping time and had well-respected community leaders from CCSJ moderate the forum.
Notify press in advance
We notified media outlets, including English and Chinese language media, well in advance of the event. This allowed multiple outlets to report on the forum, which amplified the impact of the forum by sharing information with more community members.
Recruitment and support from multiple organizations
We conducted community outreach through CCSJ, which allowed us to reach a larger base of community members. We also worked with CCSJ partners to make sure our tone and questions would resonate with the perspectives of different community members. Showing a united front among CCSJ and a well-attended event also demonstrated to candidates and government officials that we are a serious collective force that should be at the table for community safety issues.
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