YouTube is making it very easy for anyone to follow the presidential debates in the coming weeks. For the first time, YouTube will offer the streaming video on their Elections Hub. Their blog lists other YouTube channels where viewers can find commentary and analysis. Here is the news release from the Official YouTube Blog post “The 2012 Presidential and Vice Presidential Debates, live on YouTube” by Olivia Ma.

For more news coverage, be sure to read:

“YouTube to live stream Presidential debates for the first time this month” in The Next Web.

“YouTube to livestream United States presidential, vice-presidential debates (Video)” by Andrew Moran in the Examiner.

I saw this item on Eric Brown’s Political Activity Law blog.

YouTube is now the place to watch the latest political videos with its new YouTube Politics Channel. According to YouTube’s blog, “The new YouTube Politics site will feature the latest campaign ads, parodies, gotchas, and speeches, offering you a 360-view of the election.”

YouTube Politics follows in the footsteps of other Google projects that touch upon politics and elections, such as YouTube News and YouTube Town Hall. Of course since it is YouTube, you will be able to follow each candidate to see how they are doing by seeing their stats – how many video views they have had, how many subscribers, and the quality of the comments they receive.

YouTube’s blog offers this announcement in honor of the event: “YouTube.com/Politics: Tracking the 2012 election campaign through online video” and here is Politico’s coverage of the launch: “Google to Launch YouTube Politics” by Jennifer Martinez.

Most of us have become accustomed to offering our preferences and opinions on social networks. We have the “like” button on Facebook for the updates our friends share – pictures, news, and videos. On YouTube, you can mark a video as a favorite. You can share it, flag it, add it to a playlist, and leave your comments on it.

This week, YouTube launched YouTube Town Hall, a place where you can watch videos created by members of Congress. They are speaking on topics such as the budget, energy policy, education, health care, the economy, and the war in Afghanistan.

Like everywhere else in social media, you can weigh in your opinion “supporting” a video’s message by clicking the support button. You can also share videos with your friends. YouTube’s Town Hall page opens with the motto: “Watch the debates. Choose your side.”

The videos can be viewed in debate mode, with two videos (offering opposing messages) sitting side-by-side, or by what YouTube calls the “Leaderboard,” which ranks the videos from the ones getting top support down to the least supported.

You can even ask questions on policy. If enough people give your question a “thumbs up,” it may become one of the top-rated and selected each month to be answered by a member of Congress!

I am keenly interested to see whether this will catch on. Is this the town hall of the future? Could it reshape the way we conduct campaign debates? Let’s see!

Have a good weekend.