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The New Voters Project Presidential Youth Debate

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Why I Vote

The Lighter Side of Election, Care of Candidate Zero

Click here to see if you've got the skills to be President - you know, the lightenin' quick arrow keys and the fearless ability to collect votes by eating stars in a maze while dodging voracious cartoon Democrats and Republicans. If you first collect a ticket, button, picket, or cup of coffee then you can win 50 votes by swaying each Democrat or Republican in your favor - AKA eating them Pac-Man-style. (Ms. Pac-Man-style for the ladies.) The game's wahka-wahka-wahka sound is worth it alone.

Nonpartisan Parody: CANDIDATE ZERO is a one-platform pol who knows how to bond with potential voters ("I've always wanted to try yoga"; "Tiramisu is never as good as you think it's going to be"). He's got his own bio ("I invented the after-hours party") and his own mockumentary clips from the mock campaign trail where he mockingly mocks about himself and our "beautiful land of freedom, where woodchucks can chuck and the deer can do...whatever it is that deer like to do." Added bonus: Real footage of a hopping monkey. It's a monkey. But it's hopping.

About Farai Chideya

Farai Chideya

Why is Farai qualified to contribute one of the 15 sets of equally weighted question nominations from our moderating panel? Have you seen her bio? She knows the issues and their nuances more than well enough to know how to challenge all three participating candidates, and her professionalism and accreditation are unparalleled, especially as a young American:

Farai Chideya, 35, moderated the third Democratic Presidential Debate last September, and has contributed political analysis and commentary for CNN, MTV, Fox, MSNBC, BET, CBS and ABC. She was named to Newsweek's "Century Club" of 100 people to watch, placed number seven in PoliticsOnline.com's 2003 worldwide survey of "25 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics," and received awards including a National Education Reporting Award, a Unity Award in Media, a GLAAD Award, and a MOBE IT Innovator award.

Chideya has been covering politics professionally for fifteen years, and first wrote about politics for a national publication at the age of sixteen. She's published articles in newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, Time, Spin, Vibe, O, Mademoiselle and Essence. Chideya has also published three books: Don't Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African Americans (Plume Penguin, 1995), The Color of Our Future (William Morrow, 1999), and Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters (Soft Skull, 2004), which illustrates why half of Americans are cut out of the political system - and what we can do about it.

Chideya completed a Freedom Forum Media Studies Center fellowship, examining why young Americans are tuning out the news, and anchored the prime time program "Pure Oxygen" on the Oxygen women's channel. In addition to her work as a television political analyst, she currently hosts Your Call Radio, a political and cultural call-in show, on San Francisco's KALW 91.7 FM. In conjunction with San Francisco State University, she has also re-launched Pop and Politics, a nonprofit, nonpartisan online magazine of news and opinion, which specifically secured Farai some of those aforementioned awards, including number seven on PoliticsOnline.com's top 25 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics and a MOBE IT Innovator award.

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