U.S. President Barack Obama and
his Republican challenger Mitt Romney face off in their third and final debate,
with polls showing them dead even in their race for the White House. (AFP/Jewel
Samad/Getty Images)
The Star's team of reporters live-blogged the third and final U.S. presidential debate. Click here to read a recap.
The
stage is set prior to the second presidential debate to be held at the
David Mack Center at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, Oct. 16. (AFP/Saul Loeb)
The Star's team of reporters live-blogged the second U.S. presidential debate. Read a recap here.
Visitors walk under a relief bust of vice
president Joe Biden and republican congressman Paul Ryan at
Centre College in Danville, Kentucky Oct. 10. (Reuters/Matt Sullivan)
The Star's team of reporters - Mitch Potter, Tim Harper, Daniel Dale, Robert Benzie and Andrew Livingstone - live-blogged the U.S. vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan.
Click here for full coverage of the U.S. election.
While the 2012 U.S. Election is being viewed as the first full-on social
media election (both Twitter and Facebook were at pre-mass popularity levels in
2008), it's also the first election where presidential candidates will face the
lie detector test.
Wait, what?
No, they won't be sat down in a grimy chair with a beaming lamp shoved in
their faces while they answer questions about what they'll do for the economy,
to increase jobs, or with foreign policy — although, it would make for good
television.
It’s less Hollywood movie-esque, but
interesting nonetheless.
A non-partisan group in the United
States in favour of limited government will
put Obama and Romney to the test off-camera. Employing a new truth-detecting
technology, Americans for Limited Government says they will measure voice patterns to
determine whether Obama and Romney are telling the truth or not. The analysis
also measures stress levels and level of concentration, the group says.
Unlike a traditional polygraph which requires a suspect’s cooperation and numerous
probes on the person’s body voice analysis studies the words and speech pattern
of the individual and determines if the statement was the truth “with a high
degree of accuracy.”
Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government, said the
technology is a “breakthrough for the American people.” In a statement posted on
the group’s website, Wilson
wrote the results of the tests will be made public and voters will “better be
able to judge what promises are real, and which ones are nothing more than political
pandering.”
The statement also said “with words like inaccurate, person uncertain, false
statement, highly stressed and truth, the user’s computer screen literally
explodes with data related to the veracity of the subject’s assertions.”
The company behind the technology, Voice Analysis Technology, has been used
by over six law enforcement agencies, including the U.S Department of Defense
and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to interrogate suspects.
“The near real time analysis that
Americans for Limited Government will be able to provide the public on the
veracity of the statements made in the debate is a game changer in how people
relate to politicians. The operating assumption by the general public is that
if a politician’s mouth is moving, he or she must be lying, by putting Obama
and Romney to the test, we will find out if this is true,” Wilson wrote.
It’ll be interesting to see what the results of this testing will prove – if
anything.
The Star's team of reporters live-blogged the
first U.S. presidential debate between President Barack Obama and
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
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