The Elevate Debate website was officially launched September 11, 2024.  It grew out of a concern by its founder—over fifteen years before—that the state of public debates in the United States was deficient:  Political candidate debates were devoted too much to image and too little to substance.  Debates online frequently were just a string of comments back and forth, without clear direction, and often disrupted by trolls.  Talk shows degenerated quickly into shouting matches.

The founder took a long, careful look at how best to structure an online debate—settling on the solution of crowd-sourced debates, with voting on the best arguments on both sides of the debate. This format should make it easy to find the best arguments (and the best rebuttals), and it should help debates to improve over time. It should also work well for crowd-sourced fact-checking. The founder pursued the idea relentlessly, and after much effort and prayer, Elevate Debate was born.

ElevateDebate.com is operated by a United States company and owned by Americans.