By Adrianne Kroepsch, CQ Staff

Tonight’s debate in Oxford, Miss., between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain — and all of the ensuing presidential election faceoffs — should be restructured so the candidates have more online interaction with voters, according to the Open Debate Coalition, a mix of nonprofit groups, Web entrepreneurs and activists across the ideological spectrum.

McCain and Obama will answer questions from the audience as well as some submitted via the Internet over YouTube at their second debate Oct. 7 in Nashville to embrace “the spirit of the Town Hall.” But the Open Debate Coalition wants the candidates to take Internet access a step further.

The group, in a letter to the candidates’ campaigns Friday, said the YouTube format should allow the public to help select which questions are asked rather than leaving that entirely in the hands of the debate organizers and moderators.

“This cycle’s YouTube debates were a milestone for Internet participation in presidential debates,” the letter said, citing debates held in both parties’ presidential nominating campaigns in which the questions were submitted via the video Web site by average Americans. But the coalition complained that these debates “put too much discretion in the hands of gatekeepers,” adding, “Many of the questions chosen by TV producers were considered gimmicky and not hard-hitting enough, and never would have bubbled up on their own.”

The dispatch was signed by entities as varied as American Solutions for Winning the Future, founded by Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich, a former U.S. House Speaker, and the conservative-oriented Web site RedState.com; liberal-oriented advocacy groups and Web sites such as MoveOn.org, Campaign for America’s Future, DailyKos and Huffington Post; Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, a site that features classified ads and interactive forums; and the Sierra Club, an environmentalist organization.

The coalition also asked for media companies to release the rights to presidential debate video so that it can be blogged about, circulated on YouTube and generally shared among voters without fear of legal trouble.

CNN, ABC and NBC agreed to release video rights during the primaries, but Fox threatened legal action against McCain for using a debate clip in his advertising, the group said.

The coalition asked Obama and McCain to commit that the raw footage of their debates be deemed in the public domain, and to pressure content owners to release it. “Those in charge of the video feed should be directed to make it free for anyone to use,” the letter said.