If you are just joining us… You might need a recap with this three part series blog post. Here is Part 2 – https://lastingimpact.info/voting-issues-part-2-by-caleb-zylstra-and-derek-sun/
I (Derek) distinctly remember a round early in my career where our judge told us in his bio that impact calculus was extremely important to him. I instantly scribbled on my flow “what is that” and showed it to my partner. Alas, she didn’t know either.
Don’t let the debate-jargonness of the term scare you away. Even if judges don’t know what to call it, almost every judge is begging you to do impact calculus. We won’t do a comprehensive exploration of it here (this is a good explanation), but suffice it to say that impact calculus is about adding up the weight of various arguments, and analyzing which way the scale tips even if the judge believes some of your opponents’ arguments. In essence, they measure how much an argument matters, not just whether it is true or false.
Putting it another way, it’s giving your judge more than one way to vote for your side. You may believe that an argument your friends on the other side made is false. But impact calculus is explaining why you win the round even if that argument they made is true. In a Team Policy round, this might mean the Affirmative team agreeing that their policy might cost $1 million in the short term, but contending that their policy saves more money in the long term. You’re telling the judge: 1. We disagree with their argument, but 2. Even if you agree with their argument, we’re still right.
Impact calculus is often phrased and thought of in more TP-ish terms, but it’s just as relevant to LD as it is to TP. Two years ago, under the resolution about the use of automation vs the use of personnel in combat, I (Caleb) argued a negative case which stated that greater use of automation in war would centralize power by removing human checks on whoever commands troops, and that, therefore, rulers would be enabled to become dictators. I recount this case because my strategy in most rounds was to concede almost every affirmative argument — protecting soldiers from battlefield casualties, more efficient decision-making, etc. In the last speech, my strategy was not to deny their truth, but to argue that they were less significant than the risk of democratic regimes sliding towards despotism. Quite frequently, then, my voting issues would focus more on what mattered than on what was true. In response to cases arguing that automation improved national security, I sometimes ran a voting issue of having a “nation worth securing.”
My job was — as is yours — to communicate a worldview to the judge. Worldviews are not merely sets of answers to check on true or false tests, but are ideas about the significance, scope, and severity of those answers. Those ideas are part of what you ought to communicate. They are especially important when you form voting issues, because they simplify the decision for your judge, and take them to a vantage point that makes the round more digestible — exactly what voting issues should do.
Conclusion: A Thought Experiment
A thought experiment that might be helpful to apply all of these principles is to ask yourself: “is this how I’d explain why I won this round to a friend?” We’ve both been willing participants in the (probably unwise) tournament ritual of earnest rants after rounds, describing in detail how we should have won a certain round. Debaters are often much better at proving how they won a round to their friends later than they are at proving how they won in the actual round. Voting issues are their opportunity to say to the judge (hopefully with less slang and blunt phrasing) what they would say to a friend after a round: I won the round, because of these issues, the most important of the round.
Like with all of debate, there aren’t effortless fast-tracks to having perfect voting issues. These are just principles that we hope will help you identify the most important voting issues in a round, but they won’t be of much use without consistent practice and implementation.
Your voting issues aren’t about saying everything. They shouldn’t be a mere summary, forcing the judge to sift through a mind-numbingly long flow and assemble an RFD themselves. They should be a guide — one that does the work for your judge, showing them what arguments matter, which ones don’t, and why this leads to only one logical conclusion.
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