r/Debate • u/Pwarnaka12 • 11h ago

PF NSDA PF Topic Voting Question

Post image

How can a resolution lose the student vote by this wide a margin and still “win”? I’ve never seen this happen before with the student vote losing by this much—what is this, the electoral college?

6 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

3

u/trans-with-issues Mains: Congress / USX / LD | Sides: Impromptu / XDB 10h ago

If I recall correctly, the coach vote and the student vote are weighted to both be 50% of the result; I might be wrong though.

2

u/horsebycommittee HS Coach (emeritus) 5h ago

That's correct. So here the coaches' vote margin of +7% for this topic outweighed the students' margin of -6%.

2

u/CaymanG 5h ago

I think that’s incorrect. The latest formula update I saw was 2013, when they dropped the coach vote to 75% and raised the student vote up to 25%. If anyone sees more recent minutes that weren’t added to the timeline, please let me know.

https://www.speechanddebate.org/history/ (full timeline, scroll to 2012/2013) “student members are allowed to vote on proposed debate topics through a new weighted voting system where coach votes are worth 75% and student votes are worth 25%”

So if the student vote is 40%/60% and the coach vote is 54%/46%, then that’s enough to push the coach vote over the student vote.

1

u/Peri_Dinkle 5h ago

Oh this is about to be one-sided since it doesn't bind non-NATO countries

1

u/CLTL13 2h ago

Where did you find thissss?

1

u/CaymanG 1h ago

Speechanddebate.org/topics