Part IV: Candidate Forums

What are Question Facilitators?

Question Facilitators were previously known as “screeners.” Question Facilitators have training and experience in formulating questions so that they are nonpartisan, unbiased, and not personal in nature. Ideally, Question Facilitators have attended an LWV training workshop. It is also helpful if they have some knowledge about the issues and the roles and responsibilities of the elected offices that are pertinent to the forum. The language that we use in our questions matters and people do notice.

There should always be a team (at least two) of Question Facilitators for each forum. If questions are solicited in advance of the forum date, the team should review and organize those questions prior to the forum. If local LWVs solicit written questions during a forum, those questions should be reviewed in real time by Question Facilitators and forwarded to the Moderator.

Specific duties include:

• arrive early to review forum rules and questions submitted or prepared in advance

• meet with Moderator to review rules, procedures

• scan questions submitted, rework, edit, or group like questions together

• set aside questions that are illegible, inappropriate, hostile, not relevant to subject/speakers/race, or unclear

• create new questions

• deliver questions on notecards to Moderator throughout event.

• all questions submitted are property of LWV and should be given to Event Planner at end of evening