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Principle Two: Time Signals Importance

This post is a continuation from last week’s article...

Reflecting on my (Derek’s) earliest rounds in previous seasons is a little painful. I remember quite a few rounds where I’d spend the majority of our team’s closing speech on the defensive, responding to the previous speech, and then tack on two voting issues with fifteen seconds to go. The irony is that I did believe with all my heart that my voting issues should decide my judge’s ballot. But that’s not what my judge heard. By spending so much of my time on defense, I was signalling that my voting issues were not what mattered. 

Your judge will remember what you talked about the most, regardless of what it was. The amount of time you devote to responding, and the amount of time you devote to any particular argument, teaches the judge how much weight it deserves. The more time you spend on an argument, the more likely that a judge will weigh it heavily. 

If you spread yourself too thin across too many voting issues, or by failing to defend and present your case as well as addressing your opponent’s, you’re failing to signal to your judge what they should care about. Indeed, both of us have gotten ballots telling us that a certain argument would have swayed the ballot in our direction if we’d focused on it more. If your speech treats each argument as equally worthy of your time, you’re telling your judge that nothing in the round deserves special attention. In the absence of that guidance, your judge is left to decide for themselves what mattered most, and that’s a gamble you shouldn’t take. 

Spending a long time responding to a pedantic argument from your opponent – for example, dedicating too much time to addressing Topicality as Affirmative – gives outsized credence to what was originally a minor argument in the judge’s mind. Even if the judge initially viewed it as an insignificant objection, your time management tells them that this must be a bigger issue than they thought. In attempting to defeat that argument, you’ve inadvertently made a mountain out of a molehill. Instead, you can briefly agree with their argument, but say another argument you made matters more and outweigh – a concept we’ll explore more in the next post. You can agree with your opponent that seatbelts occasionally cause injuries in car accidents, for example. But your judge knows this is a frivolous argument, and you can dismiss their argument by saying that those rare injuries are outweighed by the millions of lives seatbelts have saved every year. 

On the other hand, if you know one of your own arguments is unlikely to decide the ballot, don’t present it as a voting issue. Don’t oversell marginal arguments that aren’t realistically able to carry the ballot and neglect to invest time in arguments that might. Reserve the status of voting issue for the arguments most likely to influence your judge’s decision. 

Your last speech is your opportunity to leave an impression on the judge about what issues matter most. Voting issues are one of your best tools to do that, but they need time to cement their place in the judge’s mind. Judges think most about what you talk about the most.

Principles like this become powerful when students have the chance to practice them. Through Lasting Impact! clubs and coaching, students can work on making these strategic decisions in real time—and get the feedback they need to turn a good principle into a competitive habit. Have questions… comment below or reach out to Anne.e.mcclure@gmail.com

As we dive into Team Policy Camp this week, we’re spending time not only on building strong arguments, but on learning how to make those arguments matter to a judge. One of the most important- and often overlooked- skills in debate is knowing how to bring a round to a clear and compelling conclusion. A great debater doesn’t simply give the judge more arguments to consider; they help the judge understand which arguments matter most and why those arguments should determine the ballot. This week’s article, written by Caleb and Derek, takes a closer look at one of the most important tools for doing exactly that: the voting issue. Whether you’re brand new to TP or have been debating for years, learning to craft voting issues that actually make your judge’s job easier can be a game-changer… keep reading or sign up for TP Camp HERE. And don’t forget our TP Sourcebook is HERE!!