Preamble: In debates, too often presidential and vice-presidential candidates fail to answer questions, or make misleading or factually inaccurate statements. We believe that the integrity of our democracy requires that candidates should be held accountable if they do not answer fully and honestly.

Petition: To 2012 Presidential and Vice-Presidential Debate Moderators (Jim Lehrer, Candy Crowley, Bob Schieffer and Martha Raddatz)

We urge you to do all in your power to hold all the candidates accountable to the truth in the upcoming debates. Specifically, we urge you to have independent teams of fact-checkers available to you, and if they determine that a candidate has distorted the truth, we urge you to immediately inform the listening and viewing audience of this, and to state for the record what the true facts are in the case under discussion. Furthermore, if ever a candidate does not answer a question that he has been asked, we urge you to state, "Let the record show that the candidate has not answered the question."

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