Thurm,+Eric

The key to winning my ballot is to make it clear why you are winning the round. And by clear, I don't mean extending your standard in 15 seconds without talking about the other standard and then winning a small piece of offense. Do work in your last rebuttal to, for lack of a better phrase, tell me a story about what the decision calculus should be for the round and why you're winning under it. That’s really all you need to know.

Some things I usually liked to know about judges before rounds:

I won't throw out any type of argument on face in terms of creating such a decision calculus, but I'm skeptical of the ability of some types of arguments (mostly ones heavily rooted in critical literature or stuff that disproves assumptions of the resolution) to persuade me to vote on them. I won't reject these types of arguments on face, but people tend to run them very poorly and without either warranting them or understanding what their authors actually say. If this seems to be the case, your speaks will top out at around a 27 and your opponent's threshold for response is probably going to be quite low.

I really, really like creative arguments that, and this is the key, //make sense//. I always liked finding the shortest logical route to affirming or negating as a debater, and if you present well-reasoned, clear, potentially philosophically interesting arguments that do this, I will be very happy. If you run interesting, nuanced stock arguments and make good responses, I will be pretty happy. If you do things like run Cummiskey and then a ton of util arguments, I will not be happy (I don't like LARPing). If you do things like run disclosure theory, multiple generic a prioris, or poorly cut and badly argued Ks, I will be extremely unhappy. I will vote on those things, but my threshold for responding is quite low.

I have messy handwriting. I consider myself a pretty good flower, but I may not get your arguments down as clearly as you think I will. This is one of the reasons why being clear is a good thing. I will say “clear” once before I start docking your speaks. I don’t have a set limit for the number of times I’ll say it, but if you don’t listen I’ll just put my pen down and glare at you. On that note, I’m fine with however fast you want to go, although if your speed voice is bot-like, I’ll probably miss some important nuance in your argument. Emphasis is a good thing. Really.

Those last two paragraphs should tell you everything you need to know about my speaker point scale.

Theory. I don’t have an opinion. I will start the round by being very inclined to buy that fairness is a voter, and equally inclined to buy “drop the argument, not the debater, without some reason why my abuse is bad enough for me to lose.” I will start the round moderately inclined to default to competing interps. None of those preferences are immutable, although if you run that fairness is not a voter (in the sense that it has no importance to the round, not that it isn’t a reason for you to lose), I will be extremely unhappy. I do have two suggestions: First, if you’re debating theory, try putting some offense on it. People tend to overinvest (especially in the 1AR) and then find that theory has been kicked because they met. Second, run theory if there’s abuse. I see the strategic value, but if you’re engaging in theory that is utterly absurd (a good example of this is “aff has to spec a sanction” from Jan/Feb of last year. “Aff spec-ed a sanction was not absurd) I will be extremely unhappy.

Last, but certainly not least (quite the opposite, I think). WEIGH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. If I don’t know why your arguments are more important, why should I vote for them? And if I know why they are more important, do you need to spend so much time responding to your opponent?