Upcoming Podcast With Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney – We Need Your Help

Technology is becoming more and more a part of mainstream life. But the journalists who have access to the 2008 presidential candidates usually aren’t prepared to talk tech, and so the candidates’ positions on digital issues are often left unexplored. We want to change that, and have been reaching out to the presidential candidates to talk one-on-one with us about the issues that are important to our readers.

Governor Mitt Romney (see his PoliticalBase profile here), a Republican candidate for president, was the first to respond, and we will be recording a podcast discussion with him in the next week. What we talk about on that podcast is largely up to TechCrunch readers.

We’re finalizing the high level questions we’ll be asking Governor Romney (and other candidates in the future). Please let us know in the comments what tech-related issues are important to you; what would you ask if you had the chance? Issues to think about:

  • the role of technology in education – what role should government and technology companies have
  • the growing digital divide in the U.S. and around the world
  • immigration and visa issues
  • the role of government in protecting personal privacy online
  • Mobile spectrum allocations and ground rules
  • How should the U.S. engage with China: technology, human rights and censorship issues
  • the role of free markets; helping U.S. technology companies compete worldwide
    Net neutrality
  • Intellectual property issues – copyright, patent and trademark policies

Please let us know which of these issues, or which other issues, are most important to you in the comments below. Please keep the political debates to a minimum – save it for the comments to the podcast itself. And any ad hominem attacks will be moderated. Things can get ugly on the political blogs, and I want to keep the level of discourse around these podcasts at a high level.

We’ll also be unofficially dedicating these podcasts to the DonorsChoose challenge. Education will be a big part of these discussions – do your part to help education by donating now (and we’re matching all donations).

One last note – we’re reaching out to candidates from all political parties in a nonpartisan manner. We want to hear from both sides of the aisle on these issues. We’ll be putting together a formal election policy in the near future with more details.