Event features all-star Republican cast.

With the start of the New Year, the U.S. election season is revving up and Yahoo! is in the thick of it. Starting at 8:00 a.m. (Eastern) today, Yahoo! is exclusively hosting the “Yahoo! News Funny Or Die GOP Presidential Online Internet Cyber Debate” on both Yahoo! News and the newly launched Comedy Channel within Yahoo! Screen.

Star-studded debate

Larry King moderates the debate in which the candidates discuss hot-button policy issues and provide invaluable insight into why they should be the next President of the United States, and bicker and promote their respective books.

The debate features Rob Delany as Mitt Romney, Horatio Sanz as Newt Gingrich, John C. McGinley as Rick Santorum, Greg Germann as Jon Huntsman, Patrick Warburton as Rick Perry, Leslie Jordan as Ron Paul, Erin Gibson as Michele Bachmann, Bryan Safi as Marcus Bachmann, and Reggie Brown as President Obama. Mike Tyson also reprises his Herman Cain for this special event.

“Yahoo! is kicking off the primary session and fulfilling Donald Trump’s unrealized vision by giving America the GOP debate it’s always wanted,” said Robertson Barrett, VP of Yahoo! News and Finance. “Election season always provides great fodder for the comedy community and Yahoo! is taking part by providing our users with a celebrity-studded, sure-to-be surprising, mock debate, Funny Or Die style.”

“With the politicians themselves often saying things that even our Funny Or Die writers couldn’t make up, we thought the time is right to stage the first ever Internet debate town hall moderated by Larry King,” said Dick Glover, CEO of Funny Or Die. “Who better to do it with than Yahoo! News? We’re already doing a show with them (“First Dates with Toby Harris” premiering Spring 2012), and they seem like nice enough folks.”

Mock debate a part of Yahoo! comprehensive elections coverage

The mock debate aligns with Yahoo!’s recent announcement of the Yahoo! Comedy Channel featuring a live uninterrupted Bill Maher stand-up “CrazyStupidPolitics: Bill Maher Live from Silicon Valley” exclusively on Yahoo!. In addition to live stand-ups, the Yahoo! Comedy Channel will include a variety of exclusive short-form videos with additional big names including Mike O’Brien (writer for Saturday Night Live) and Seth Morris (No Strings Attached, I Love You Man, Step Brothers), licensed video content from current sponsors, and Yahoo! original programming.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with Funny Or Die on a first for both of us—a mock GOP debate,” said Erin McPherson, VP and Head of Video, Yahoo!. “Of all the Republican debates we’ve seen this season, this one promises to be the most cutting edge, compelling and crazy. This debate, in conjunction with our election coverage, offers an incredible variety of content for our hundreds of millions of users and will bring our 2012 elections coverage to an even broader audience. Our partnership with Funny Or Die, along with the launch of the Yahoo! Comedy Channel is even more evidence of our commitment to provide our consumers and advertisers with the best premium content on the Web.”

In contrast to breaking news, it’s a luxury to prepare for a massive news event that falls on the calendar. And like a Guitar Hero tournament, we notched up the intensity the further we went along in the rehearsal. The goal? To create a setting as dramatic as Wolf Blitzer’s call of states on CNN to ensure that everyone was as prepared as possible to program what proved to be an historic night.

After covering the 2000 and 2004 elections at the New York Times, and watching news organizations all over the country make premature (and wrong) calls, I had just one rule for our team: “Get it right.” When you are the de facto news source for over 40 million a month, you feel a tremendous responsibility when it comes to accuracy.

To strike the right balance of keeping up with network calls without distributing misinformation, we spent time with editors from the AP before the election to understand their approach toward calling results, which is part science, part art, part gut call. You might remember the AP was the only news outlet that sent Americans to bed without a new president in 2000, saying the race was too close to call.

At Yahoo! News, our editors’ roles are to program headlines from dozens of national and international newspapers, wires, and broadcast networks. But on Election Night, we took on a more pronounced mandate as news filter. For example, if a network called a critical swing state, we would wait until at least another network called the state before announcing the news in our breaking news blog and breaking news bar. After all, we were serving what turned out to a record-breaking audience — today, comScore confirmed that we attracted 7.5 million people, the largest single day of traffic in online news history, surpassing CNN.com, MSNBC.com, AOL.com and FoxNews.com. We couldn’t afford to be wrong.

Journalists are known cynics. But when Barack Obama surpassed 270 electoral votes, we all knew it was a huge moment. The newsroom suddenly got very quiet. The sense of history was palpable. I think we all felt honored to be standing there, passing that word along to our readers.

And in my eight years at the Times — where I covered 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — I was never more proud of a newsroom operation.

Richard Vega
Senior Editor, Yahoo! News

Photo from jrejtman

Will we have our first African American president or our first female vice president? Who will be tasked with leading us out of these economic doldrums? Who will decide the fate of the war on terror? Who will solve the health care crisis and stop our addiction to oil?

If you’re an undecided voter or just want to make sure you’re watching this race to the finish, you might want to go live on Yahoo! Elections until November 4th. Even I was surprised by how jam-packed it is with helpful information. In addition to the latest news, you’ll find poll results, opinions and editorials, videos, the most blogged-about stories, great interactive modules like the Political Dashboard and Electoral College predictors, a candidate truth-o-meter, and a tally of newspaper endorsements.

And then there’s the fun stuff, like the campaign button you can put on your blog, candidate photos on Flickr, and a political quiz to see how much you’ve kept up with what the campaigns have said about each other. And don’t miss the “Create Your Scenario” feature in the Dashboard, which lets you try your hand at punditry and predict the election night outcome. Save it and compare it to calls by the likes of Arianna Huffington, Joe Trippi, and Newt Gingrich or even past elections. Sounds like a ballot party activity!

And if you’re like me, living in a state with its usual crushing number of propositions and referendums to decipher, you’ll appreciate the site’s “state” tab, which leads you to the latest wire headlines, local news and broadcast news for your locale.

Speaking of which, if you live in California, here’s a brief parenthetical. As you probably know, Proposition 8 is a proposed constitutional amendment that would overturn the state supreme court’s May decision to legalize same-sex marriage. More than 50 of Silicon Valley’s top leaders have given their personal support to No on Prop 8. Our own Jerry Yang, David Filo, Sue Decker, and Hilary Schneider are joining executives from organizations like Google, Intuit, Facebook, eBay, Cisco, Federated Media, Adobe, Reunion.com, Shopping.com, Sequoia Capital, and Twitter. They believe taking away rights from one group of people would set our state – and our country – back in the fight for fundamental fairness and equal rights. To learn more, head to pride.yahoo.com.

What seems like the longest campaign marathon in history will soon come to an end – along with the vitriol about socialism, terrorists, Caribou Barbies, mavericks, and sneaky tax policies. Hope, change. Reform, victory. Are you ready? Get out and vote!

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

• Searching for a president: With just 32 days to go until the next POTUS is decided, there’s no time to mess around. That’s why Yahoo! Search has launched a series of elections shortcuts. Want the latest on a particular candidate? Type in “Obama” or “McCain” and you’ll find links to the latest news, videos, photos, discussions, and poll results. Or type in “presidential election” for general updates as well as a link to register to vote. Curious about the contest from a state’s perspective? Type in “Iowa presidential election” and get the latest headlines and polling info for that state. More here.
• Mad dash to the finish line: Speaking of election polls and whatnot, Yahoo! News just updated its political dashboard. Just in time for the election’s home stretch, you can now see how the average poll numbers have trended over time, on a national and state-by-state basis. How has Obama fared in Ohio to date? Is McCain tracking up or down in Florida? Check it out and see if this race will be a photo finish.
• Cut to the chase: If there’s one thing we can thank the Internet for, it’s a short attention span. That’s why the new Yahoo! News beta, launched as an opt-in today, gives you just the first five paragraphs of a news story. Want more? It’s just a click away, although most people seem to drive on — proving the value of the news pyramid. (NB: If you’re a newshound getting your fix via news.yahoo.com, you’ll always get the full article.) You’ll also find relevant links to other stories and videos much higher on the page. And Yahoo! News is getting more and more open, providing links to outside sources like local newspapers, other news providers and bloggers through the Buzztracker tool. Was that short enough for you?
• Flickr’s mobile makeover: Attention iPhone-toting photographers: The new and improved mobile Flickr site (http://m.flickr.com) is now especially gorgeous for you too-cool-for-skool types. The site’s been refreshed with clearer navigation controls and puts your recent activity front and center. You can also browse sets more efficiently, thanks to arrow-topped thumbnails that help you move back and forth between photos. Trust me — it’s worth making room to your home screen.

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For the General Election, we’ve kept all of the cool features from the Primary Political Dashboard –- plus some new bells and whistles sure to enthrall the political junkie in all of us. At a glance, users still can see national and state poll averages and market predictions on the presidential prospects for Barack Obama and John McCain. Also, users can check out a new form of polling… candidate search results and popular search terms for each candidate. (It’s no surprise the most commonly search words for Barack Obama in recent days has been Joe Biden, but Jill Biden also has seen a big spike.) Users then can quickly scroll over each state to get a snapshot on how candidates are doing, or they can click on specific state to get key local headlines, state-wide searches, and voter demographic breakdowns. They also can click on the candidate images to pull up bios and campaign fund-raising totals. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

The new dashboard also includes a bevy of “Most Blogged About” election topics –- the first time BuzzTracker has been integrated into a Yahoo! News tool (stay tuned for more) — and gives users the chance to check out not only high-level blogs from a national standpoint, but also blogs from individual states. Who knew New Hampshire had so many bloggers writing about the election?

The “Create Your Scenario” tool allows anyone to make a call on every state based on the dashboard content and publish that content using a permalink in an email or blog. Essentially, we’ve put the power of the political pundits in your hands. Will Ohio go to Obama or McCain? Will Florida go blue or stay red? Take a stab at the electoral college and see how the numbers add up (remember: 270 electoral votes are needed to win the White House.) For inspiration, you can view celebrity scenarios (check out Arianna Huffington’s picks) and current and past election results. You can also compare your results to others to see where differences reside!

This Presidential Election truly marks a turning point — where distribution of information and content is no longer controlled by a few networks but rather can be created, consumed, and mashed up by the voters themselves. The Political Dashboard has been developed with you, the voter, in mind.

Have fun and enjoy the new features as we head into final few months of this historic election.

Alan Warms
Vice President and General Manager, Yahoo! News, Tech and Education