Engadine UC shares tips on running a good candidates forum

Your congregation might be nervous about holding a candidates forum - worried about speakers who avoid the question and ramble on, or the audience member who delivers a speech rather than a genuine question. Here are our top tips to solve those problems before they start.

Register and flag questions

We ask people to register online, list the issues that concern them and lodge their questions. We forward the questions to the candidates which allows them to do some research and deliver better-prepared answers. This method allows us to merge similar questions together, which avoids the problem of having an earnest question answered, “We’ve already covered that one”, which can be disappointing for the questioner, even if that answer is correct.

If there are a lot of questions on one issue we know we may need to have more than one question on it and allow extra time for candidates to cover it.

Be strict on timing

That’s right, we have a strict time limit on answers from the candidates. We choose a pair of congregation members with stout hearts to keep time, hold up signs, and ring a dinner bell when the time is up. For each question asked by the convenor, we offer the chance for each candidate to step up to the microphone and speak (if they choose) for up to one minute.

It’s not easy, the first time you ring a bell and a politician just ignores it keeps on talking. It’s even harder to keep ringing the bell and not stop until they sit down. The best way to build the confidence of a timekeeper is to practice in a rehearsal- with someone taking the role of the speaker going over time and the timekeeper practicing ringing them off and not allowing them to keep going. When the candidates and the audience see that the hosts are serious about timekeeping expectations and behaviour change rapidly!

Have clear expectations

Setting public expectations for the evening is important, and we are indebted to Sydney Alliance for many of our practices and especially this introduction we use: “Tonight is for us to meet the candidates who want our vote. We want to hear from candidates, ask them questions and, if elected, hold them accountable. In the interests of encouraging civil discourse, we ask you all to adhere to these standards: We will treat everyone with respect. We will not heckle, we will not ambush, we will not boo. In return, we expect all speakers to respect our rules, to stick to time, to answer our questions truthfully and engage honestly with us.”

Opening remarks

Before we get to questions from the audience, we invite the candidates to step up and speak for five minutes on their key policies. We retain another microphone and lectern for the convenor, who acts as a moderator of the event throughout. That allows us, as hosts, to retain control of the event, and, if necessary, interrupt a candidate and ask them to finish up, or to remain at the mic to clarify a point they made. 

Choose the right convenor

We have the luxury of a convenor who is a skilled public speaker, politically informed, and can ask clarifying questions or fact-check candidates on their responses. If you don’t have a congregation member who meets this description, try to find someone in the local community who can take this role and project the respectful-yet-firm vibe At the end of the day, it’s not possible to control or correct everything that a candidate says, but a convenor with the right manner can at least keep it moving along and allow questionable claims to ‘hang in the air’, speaking volumes.

Seating candidates

You might choose to seat the candidates in a row, panel-style, and pass a microphone between them - whatever best suits the layout of your building or best facilitates the recording of the event for live broadcast Always keep one microphone for yourself and don’t let go!

Manage audience questions

What about the audience and the roving microphone? We don’t have one! Audience members have come to hear from the candidates and have their own questions answered.  Few are delighted when an audience member launches into a partisan speech thinly disguised as a question.  In addition to questions lodged beforehand, we invite questions from the audience to be lodged via text or on slips of paper to two question moderators. The moderators merge questions where necessary or edit for clarity (for example, if more information should be added to make the context clear to other audience members) and pass them onto the convenor.

And the result is…..

With these simple boundaries, we’ve been able to get through dozens of questions in an hour, to the immense satisfaction of the audience.

We’ve built a reputation in the community and with our local political representatives that we can run a civil respectful evening of discourse at a high level. And not least - the supper! Warm church hospitality can occupy a unique place in the suburbs these days, and it is a great joy to see people milling around the church hall and spilling out into the evening air, clutching a tea cup and some yummy cake, talking, talking, and talking some more with their neighbours about how we can work better together.

I don’t mind how late it is when I turn out the lights and lock up - it’s always with immense satisfaction at how we’ve brought people together to share their ideas and consider their future.

We’re happy to have phone conversations with any congregation who wants to know more about how to hold a successful candidate forum in their area.

 

Sue McKinnon

Engadine Uniting Church

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