NEW: Candidates' Responses and Rebuttals Are In!

Before moving on to the candidates' responses, please note:

NONPARTISANSHIP: From marketing only through strictly nonpartisan media outlets, to creating an evenly split pre-moderating panel of individuals and a nonpartisan moderating panel, we exhaustively committed ourselves to keeping true to our nonpartisanship. You can click here to learn more about the vigilantly nonpartisan process we used to reach millions of young Americans and ultimately enable them to ask and choose these final questions for the candidates.

PREVIOUSLY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ONLY: The final questions don't include all of the many concerns that are important to young Americans. Indeed, we were inundated with questions that had been repeatedly answered by the candidates but rarely get air-time in the traditional debates. After you've viewed the responses to these top 12 previously unanswered questions, don't forget to also check out the answers to those other common questions from young Americans by clicking here.

View the opening statements, responses and rebuttals

Or go directly to the rebuttals

Why a Presidential Youth Debate?

WHY? BECAUSE WE LIKE YOU. AND THEN THERE'S THIS: There are 24 million young Americans in this country. That is a lot of us. Even so, it makes sense that the campaign ads and what goes on in Washington are so targeted to older voters. They vote. In fact, in the 2000 election 36% of people our age voted and 70% of older voters turned out on Election Day. So we here at The New Voters Project - the largest grassroots youth voter mobilization campaign in history - decided to do something about it. Our plan has a few somethings, actually: [ Read More ]

Debate Schedule and Moderating Panel

Following is a schedule of how the debate works:

• Thu., 9/16 - The Presidential Youth Debate began and we started collecting debate questions from 13-35 year olds nationwide. We received over 5,100 in total, with over 4,300 of those coming in the final four days alone.
• Mon., 9/27 - 4pm EST, we stopped accepting questions. - Moderating panel organizations, along with our lead moderator Farai Chideya, received the top 50 questions and nominated their top 20 from 18-35 year olds and their top 5 from 13-17 year-old "Future Voters." [Read more about our vigilantly nonpartisan moderating process.]
• Tue., 9/28 - Nominations were tallied.
• Wed., 9/29 - Top 20 questions were posted to this site for 18-35 year olds to choose the 10 they most want answered by President Bush, Senator Kerry and Mr. Nader, and the top 5 from 13-17 year olds were posted so these Future Voters can choose their greatest concern.
• Tue., 10/5 - Question voting ended at noon (EST) - Along with one question from our lead moderator Farai Chideya, we sent the candidates the 12 previously unanswered questions that most concern young Americans, and requested well thought-out, accurate answers returned from them within one week, as they've previously agreed to do.
• Tue., 10/13 - The candidates' responses were posted to site, and they were given one week to add their rebuttals of 500 words or less.
• Tue., 10/20 - Rebuttals were added to the original responses, finally giving young Americans the unique answers they need to vote for the future they want. Americans of all ages will also have their last pre-Election look at how the top candidates responded to the same previously unanswered questions.
• Tue., 11/2 - Voters elected a President.

Narrowing down all of the great questions submitted by our nation's youth is not an easy task. . . [ Read More ]