The Candidate Forum organized by Citizens for Purcellville is a farce perpetrated by a longtime critic of the Mayor and his majority on Purcellville’s Town Council.
The Moderator’s neutrality is questionable. The person designated as the “neutral moderator” has signed a recall petition targeting one candidate and displaying signs supporting candidates opposing that candidate and those he is running with. From the standpoint of appearance of impartiality, this is highly questionable.
There is no random question-selection procedure stated anywhere. The rules say the moderator will select questions, but provide no guarantee that questions will be randomly selected from the available questions.
There is no guarantee regarding the student question pool. The emails do not state that all high-school-student questions will actually be included in the pool, nor explain how those questions will be screened or selected.
There are no safeguard against advance disclosure of questions. There is no rule prohibiting the moderator, organizers, or anyone else from providing questions to particular candidates or campaigns before they are asked in the forum set for September 10th.
Candidates had no initial role in selecting the moderator or venue. The organizers selected the moderator and ultimately the location without providing candidates a documented opportunity to participate in those choices, despite subsequently acknowledging concerns about impartiality and offering to consider changing the moderator.