RECAP: Third U.S. presidential debate

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.

RECAP: Second U.S. presidential debate

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.

 

REAP: U.S. vice-presidential debate

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.

Obama and Romney to face lie detector test tonight. Yep, that's going to happen

 

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.

- Andrew Livingstone, Staff reporter

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RECAP: U.S. Presidential Debate

The Star's team of reporters live-blogged the first U.S. presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Read a recap of the debate here.