Question: Just wondering about the idea, what if stack exchange platform would be used for candidates to answer citizens questions.

Some changes would need to be made to the platform.

* Only eligible voters can ask questions.
* Only eligible voters can vote on questions and answers
* Only candidates can answer questions.
* Community moderators would merge duplicates but there should be limitations on what can be done.
* No need for "accept" feature, people can vote for their favourite answer

*just a few basic rules of top of my head, details of the system are not part of the question*

That obviously poses the problem of user verification.

If we ignore/solve the user verification problem. **What would it take to convince politicians to actually use it?**

The idea came to me recently as I read an AMA with one politician and he answered only the questions that had a positive answer and anything inconvenient was completely ignored.
Often debates are being accused of having prepared questions.
Additionally, if you watch videos analysing debates, often they focus on candidates charisma and wits rather than their answers to decide who "won".

It would truly allow anyone to ask questions and highlight ignored issues if a question with a lot of votes has no answers.

Possibly there could be accusations of hackers manipulating scores and other content but I think that is a weak argument to avoid answering a question if any politician ever cared.

Answer: 
It doesn't work, because it doesn't fit the model:

> 
> Ask questions, get answers, no distractions
> 
> 
> 

A politician isn't interested in answering the question. A politician wants to get votes.

> 
> Good answers are voted up and rise to the top.
> 
> 
> 

But if questions and answers are partisan, then "popular answers rise to the top". That is different.

Moreover the world is not the USA. That seems to have been forgotten in this proposal.

And I'm not going to prove my eligiblity or otherwise to vote (which could mean me telling about my immigration and felon status) to Stack Exchange.

This proposal is a non-starter.
If you can guarantee that 80% of the people voting in the election will read the politician's posting, it will be used.

If you can deliver only .0008% viewership, forget about it.