Caveh Zonooz had some questions for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He was a student leader and was looking for a reasoned answer to a legitimate policy question. Instead of one of those, his email received an auto-reply saying the Chancellor got too much email to respond to any. Very frustrating.

This led Caveh, along with Alexander Puschkin, to develop a website that allowed citizens to submit questions, vote for other questions they most want answered, and submit the most popular question to the Chancellor. Soon, the Chancellor agreed to answer the top three questions each week. The engagement of the Chancellor drove web traffic high, 30 million monthly visits from 14 million monthly visitors.

Now Caveh and Alex have turned their sites on America and have launched Straight2theCandidates.com. Much like our own 10Questions.com, Straight2theCandidates.com seeks to leverage the power of the internet to create a rational exchange between voters and candidates. Questions are submitted, reviewed, and responded to. Followed by the potential for follow-up questions, and perhaps even a deliberative process.

Like John Locke, I believe that all conflicts can be resolved by rational discourse. Of course, both sides have to be rational and discoursing. But if the planets align, the wonders of rational decision-making can be the route to good policy and good lives.

So one would think that if we inserted rational decision making tools into the presidential selection process, that would be a good thing. At least in principle.

But do we vote with our heads or with our hearts? Do we pick the candidate we agree with the most or the one who makes us feel good? For those who vote with their heads, three new websites should appeal strongly to your desire to understand what you get with your vote, at least in principle.

Straight2theCandidates.com and 10Questions.com, along with Connect2Elect.com offer some great tools for voters to dig into the elections to compare themselves to the candidates and ask them for more information. To help them make rational choices at the polls.

So I checked out on Connect2Election.com to see which candidates were closest to my views. And it seems that I should vote for either Dennis Kucinich or Chris Dodd. Did you expect them to be so close to each other?

So rationally, I should vote for one of these two candidates. But emotionally, will I? Where in a rational decision making process, based on issue positions, is an evaluation of how much confidence a candidate elicits? And where does electability fit into the equation?

As for Straight2theCandidates.com and our own 10Questions.com, they have the ability to deliver both a rational pitch and an emotional pitch, especially since answers can be provided by candidates via video. Video can convey the subtleties of emotional triggers (tone, posture, demeaner, etc.) that a text-based presentation would lack.

On a personal note, I used to show a photo of Ronald Reagan standing tall and proud, hand over his heart as he said the pledge of allegiance. He was standing next to a rather diminutive Chinese Premier. At that moment, despite disagreeing with Reagan on virtually every issue, I felt an immense sense of pride in being an American, pride in having Mr. Reagan as my president.

So what does that say about me and rational voting? These new websites are great for digging into the substance of the candidates, but in the end, will they change our minds? I hope so, but the jury is still out.