The YouTube debates last night drew answers typical in any presidential election season. But the off the bus mode in which questions were posed to the candidates is worth a closer look.

Was CNN really trying to give ownership of the debates back to the crowd? Some still think this was “their debate.”

Leading up to the event I suspected that CNN would use their filtering authority to search and find questions they would have asked anyways.

“CNN wants to look as if they are open to viewer suggestions, but aren’t ready to commit 100 percent just yet.”

While there is no definitive way to tell if this was a closed debate in an open debate’s clothing, a good long look at the garments shown last night might reveal a little. And that’s what we did last night. While some researchers kept a list of which YouTubers were getting their questions asked, others were Googling or even contacting the unassuming debate participants to find out just who these people are and how they became involved in the debate.

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Beverly Rivera Davis wrote a great profile of Mark Strauss from Davenport, Iowa who asked what the candidates intend to do about healthcare for the elderly.

In Davis’ post OffTheBus.Net learned that “CNN called him and requested that he re-shoot the question and keep it to twenty-seven seconds.”

That’s interesting. CNN was contacting YouTube participants to solicit editorialized versions of their questions.

Steven Peterson, a NewAssignment.Net contributor was actually flown into South Carolina by Google and YouTube under the guise that his video had potential to be chosen. He was contacted last week “because they were trying to find people with questions that had a good chance of getting past the CNN filters,” said Peterson. But of course, nothing was promised.

Peterson and a dozen others received royal treatment, including press passes and a stay at the hotel with the other big attendees. But less than half of those who were flown in actually got their questions asked. According to Peterson, before the debate different CNN producers approached the sponsored group offering potential interviews the next morning if their question was asked.

It would make sense to have a few of the debate questioners on site for after thoughts and interviews. Hey, it makes for great television. The first “average joe” to ask a question in a modern presidential debate. American Idol meets the presidential debates.

While Peterson doesn’t think that YouTube or Google knew which questions were going to be asked, it becomes obvious that there must have been communication between the two organizations as the list narrowed. Who was doing the narrowing or nudging is anybody’s guess.

At the same time, many of the YouTube participants were completely in the dark that their question would be asked until they saw it on television.

Jordan Williams was watching the debate with his mother and began jumping up and down when he saw his video come up asking how Obama or Clinton would address critics who charge that “either one is not authentically black enough, or the other is not satisfactorily feminine.” In the end, however, Williams was left wanting.

“Much to my chagrin, I felt Senator Clinton just cut off the fact that she’s a woman, instead of answering it. And felt Obama made a nice little joke, but didn’t answer it in the least. I was pretty disappointed by both of them,” said Williams.

In the end, it’s hard to make out what really went on behind the scenes of choosing the YouTube debate questions.

Even if CNN did overuse their filtering power, much was gained by crowdsourcing the debates.

Maybe the same questions would have been asked by Wolf Blitzer, had the debate been organized in a traditional means. But as great as Blitzer is, the question posed by Mary and Jen about their gay lifestyle or Mark Strauss about Alzheimer’s has more authority coming from them. They are the experts — they are the one’s whose lives depend on the outcome of the election.

The real power of relying on the crowd comes not from better PR, but from relying on experts. Blizter is not an expert on being gay or having a parent with Alzheimer’s. He might be a better all around journalist than those who submitted questions from YouTube, but hands-down — those questions were posed by them because they have authority over it. It always comes back to this: Our audience knows more than we do.