Paul,+Jonathan

Georgetown
As I've judged more, I've found that I rarely use my ballot to enforce my particular argumentative preference. I have plenty, but I'm more concerned with the way you debate a particular argument than the particular argument you make. I still don't consider myself a good judge for teams that don't read a topical plan, but I have voted for teams that take this approach in the past.

A few things that will help more than me listing my particular preference on particular arguments:

1. Make arguments that compare the relevance of impact calculus filters. Is magnitude or time frame more important? Why should I disregard low probability arguments? I'm not annoyed when teams introduce the standard filters, but the most successful impact debaters don't stop there.

2. Analytic arguments can be as effective as having a card. The standards for evidence quality these days is pathetic. After highlighting, most evidence teams read lacks any credible warrant. Logical arguments are unlikely to get you to *zero* risk, but they can significantly reduce the probability of an advantage or DA. This is particularly true in the context of politics DAs. It is easy to convince me that a good analytic argument should hold as much weight as a card from a staff writer that uses the phrase political capital.

3. Along those lines, people should challenge terminal impacts more. I find it hard to imagine a scenario where terrorism would cause one million deaths, let alone extinction. The same goes for economy arguments, disease extinction scenario, and almost any popular debate impact for that matter.

4. Qualifications should matter. Staff writers that talk about the WTO’s ability to prevent nuclear conflict should probably be questioned. JD candidates probably don’t know as much about the fate of the Doha round as experienced policy experts. Some people read blogs that don’t even pretend to be qualified, but somehow these issues get lost in the shuffle. I will not disregard an argument because the author is unqualified, but it will have substantially less relevance if you make good qualifications arguments.

5. Communicate. Sometimes I think debaters forget that it iss hard to judge and hard to understand debaters. I will generously reward clear and persuasive speakers. I can't imagine giving above a 28.5 to someone when I can't understand the text of the evidence they read. Reading evidence comprises at least half of your speech and I wonder why the community collectively decided it was ok for that part of the speech to be incomprehensible.