Democracy depends on a free exchange of ideas. That calls for both freedom of expression, and for the attention of voters. In the US and other democracies, we have plenty of free expression, but there's no organization to it. So different people hear different things. And they fall into factions. As CS Lewis (writing in a different context) put it, ".[people] henceforth encounter opposition only in the emasculated form of rumor. Each group hears not the best [of what the other has to offer,] but the worst.

"Toward this fundamental deficiency, the author proposes that states enact legislation that would establish parameters for debates, not between specific candidates, but between opposing political parties (as represented by advocates they choose.) These would be real debates - that is, ones with debate resolutions to be proven or disproven. And they wouldn't be oral, but rather written, conducted over the Internet, and over a period of at least days. In any election cycle, such debates, bringing forth the best arguments the advocates for the opposing parties could muster, would likely be among the most illuminating and balanced public discussions of that cycle. In any case, they'd surely be the single most politically authoritative.The state wouldn't, of course, require such debates; it would only set the parameters for them. But if there were a debate, and it met those parameters, then the state would do two things: (1) it would make transcripts (and audio files) of these debates available to its citizens, and (2) prior to voting, it would require its citizens to affirm to having read (or heard) them; to affirm to having considered, to the best of their ability, the arguments made - and not just ones by the side they favor, but ones by the other side as well. Of course, on this, some citizens would lie, but those persons would be beyond argument in any case.

Most citizens wouldn't lie. If we collectively agreed on material that was important to an election, and made a reading or listening of it mandatory, most citizens would comply. And, in such a way, we would have a more meaningful democratic discussion. Why would we settle for anything less?.