( CNN ) -- On Wednesday night , an estimated 50 million Americans will watch the first presidential debate live , as President Barack Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney face off for 90 minutes in Denver . The odds are that many of those watching will have more than their TVs on as they do so : Millions are also likely to be glancing at their laptops or mobile phones , scanning the live conversation about the debates that will unfold over social networks and chiming in with their own comments . But while this burst of online chatter will undoubtedly affect the coverage and analysis of the debates , the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates has , unfortunately , taken only the most modest of steps to channel all of this public participation into something more meaningful than a digital water-cooler conversation . Despite all kinds of interesting experiments during the primaries , including questions from the audience via Twitter and inviting real-time feedback that moderators occasionally inserted into the live debate conversation , the commission is rolling out a quasi-interactive online tool that is bound to leave the public wanting much more . Opinion : Debate advice -- Obama , light a cig ; Romney , throw deep . A week ago , the debate commission announced `` The Voice Of ... , '' a digital platform that will be deployed on special landing pages hosted by Google , Yahoo and AOL to `` give people throughout the country the opportunity to share their voice . '' Now , a day before the first debate , I 've gotten a peek at the dashboard they 're delivering , from the Yahoo page that has just gone live ( the others are still placeholders ) . `` The Voice Of '' landing page offers three options : explore the issues , voice your view and watch the debates . Of those , the second choice is the most intriguing , because it gives participants the ability to not just say where they stand on topics like health care , energy , regulation , education , foreign affairs , terrorism , jobs , taxes and federal spending but to then see how they compare with other participants in the aggregate . A dynamic counter will then also show how many people have `` shared their voice . '' This is very nice , and it will certainly be interesting to see how the live debate affects the results on `` The Voice Of ... '' dashboards . But it barely scratches the surface of what the Internet could do to open up the debates , engage the public and allow for a more robust and accountable discussion of key issues by the candidates . It 's kind of like if the debate commission got itself a synthesizer but just decided to use it to play `` Chopsticks . '' To most people , `` sharing your voice '' means actually getting a sense that you are being listened to . Otherwise , what is the point of having a voice ? Unlike broadcast television , the Internet is an arena of abundance . You do n't need to speak in soundbites online or conduct pnly one-way , top-down conversations . Opinion : How will debates sway the undecideds ? Instead of just creating an online playpen for a parallel but essentially disconnected national conversation about the debates , the commission could have built on work done during the primaries to capture and reflect public responses to the actual candidate responses , in real time . Or , as McCurry and Fahrenkopf promised in a little-noticed news release in July , they could also be using the Internet to enable the public to `` share their input with the debate moderators in advance of the debates . '' There 's still time for the commission to rethink this approach , but I 'm not holding my breath . After all , the dirty little secret about the Commission on Presidential Debates is that is essentially a creature of the two major parties that views its job as managing an orderly joint television appearance that both major presidential campaigns will agree to . The real details of how these debates are run are actually hammered out in secret negotiations between top lawyers from both sides , as George Farah of the advocacy group OpenDebates.org has documented in detail . A whistle-blower leaked him the 2004 contract between the Bush and Kerry campaigns that showed that both sides had agreed that the two men would not ask each other direct questions , for example . In the town-hall-style debate , they also agreed that `` Audience members shall not ask follow-up questions or otherwise participate in the extended discussion , and the audience members ' microphone shall be turned off after he or she completes asking the question . '' If the presidential campaigns can go so far as to prohibit a live audience member in a town-hall-style debate from even asking a follow-up question , which is something that would happen naturally if it was a genuine town hall , then it 's understandable why the commission 's approach to the Internet is so compartmentalized and limited . This is a shame . But as a new generation of Americans who use social media naturally enters public life , this artificial wall between the voters and our would-be leaders will eventually come down . Opinion : Candidates , stop vying to be debate underdog . The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of Micah Sifry .
Wednesday 's presidential debate will feature limited online interaction . Commission on Presidential Debates created `` The Voice Of ... '' for viewers . Tool lets users `` share their voice '' but not with candidates .