Maloy,+Meghan

I did four years of Public Forum in high school and two years of Parliamentary in college. I was briefly the team manager for Northwestern's debate team. I've been judging policy tournaments for about four years, mostly CDL tournaments.
 * My Debate Background **

If the tournament has a restricted case list, especially if you're in a division that can only read core files, I'm almost definitely not going to vote for T. As the aff, all you really need to tell me is that the case is reasonably topical and any predictability standards are dumb because it was one of x number of options that the aff was permitted on a restricted case list that the neg had access to before the tournament even started.
 * Topicality **

I'll vote for T if the neg has clearly labelled why it is a voter and the aff has horribly mishandled it, but I won't enjoy writing that ballot...

I don't like them. If you're really backed into a corner, and that's the only strategy available to you, that's fine. Go for it. Otherwise, if there are reasonable disadvantages that you could run, please choose those. If you are running a K, make sure the links are clear. If you have a blip of a link in the 1NC and then the rest of your speeches are extending/expanding the impacts, I don't really have a reason to vote the aff down. In many cases, the K you're reading has been read before, by you or another team. The fact that you're reading it again means that whatever your vague alt is didn't solve the problem last time. Negs, if you're going for the K, you have to tell me why this time is different or why the K needs to be reiterated to have an effect, or if you can, tell me what effect the K did have the last time it was read. Affs, tell me how many times the K has been run before and how nothing has changed.
 * Kritiks **

That stuff above is all about K's on the negative. Sometimes, a topic might call for a kritikal affirmative. In Parliamentary debate, we had some topics where the aff basically had to defend racism. That would be a fine time to go kritikal on the aff. The 2014-2015 policy topic is not such a topic. If an aff is kritikal, this is the time for the neg to run T.

I give logically reasoned arguments as much weight as arguments supported by a bunch of cards. In the event that teams have cards that directly contradict I prefer the team that explains to me why their card makes sense.
 * Evidence **