Introduction
I find that framework in policy vs. negative K rounds is often far more difficult to navigate for debaters and evaluate for judges than it should be. In this four-article series, I identify what I believe to be the most glaring issues and misunderstandings with the argument and offer correctives along the way.
In the first part, I attempt to clear up confusion surrounding what exactly a “role of the ballot” is, and the different theoretical levels on which that same claim can operate. In the second and third parts, I dive deep into the theoretical groundings for contemporary framework models and criticize the middle ground sort of approaches judges often take in these rounds. In the fourth part, I attempt to revive a framework that actually does offer a coherent balance between the judge as policymaker and educator, offering an option for those not willing to moot the plan OR the K.
This article is structured into three substantive parts, moving from the most abstract level of debate theory to the least. In each, I discuss an argument that debaters currently label a “role of the ballot”. I conclude that only one of these is truly worthy of the title, and we should change our language as such.
Definitions
Before we examine competing frameworks, we have to define them. As I understand it, the key distinction for framework in policy vs. kritik debates and framework as it applies to topicality is that one offers a model of argument evaluation while the other offers a model of debate.
The former defines a role for the judge and their ballot, giving them instruction on what position they should evaluate arguments from and what it means when they vote one way or another. They do not include or exclude arguments being made on the basis of substance, but different forms of arguments might become more or less important based on the weight they are given in the evaluation process.
T-USFG debates are a question of the content that is considered “permissible argumentation” in debate. It creates a model for the kind of debates that happen, but does not render a judgement on how the judge should evaluate those when they do. This does exclude certain argumentation on face if it does not meet the resolutional requirements, just as judges are told to simply disregard a topical policy AFF rather than “give it less weight in evaluation”.
Technically, one can view the entire concept of framework as a broader structure of simple framing issues. The role of the judge and ballot are only additional instructions for the judge to resolve the meta-question of who did the better debating. For the purposes of this argument and debates more generally, I treat framework proper as on a higher level from regular framing questions. This is because it structures how the judge approaches even evaluating other pieces of instruction in the round.
Meta-Theoretical Issues
Starting from the broadest lens, meta-theoretical issues are those external to any given round. They do not inform the judge how they should evaluate any given debate, but serve as broader definitions guiding the activity. The two most prominent of these arguments are “the Role of the Ballot = vote for the better debating” and, to a somewhat lesser extent, “the judge decides a winner and loser of the round”. For the purposes of this article, I’ll focus on the first of these claims–the same analysis applies to the latter.
We should understand this first ROTB argument not as a proper framework argument or even “role of the ballot” as it is understood in contemporary debate, but rather as a definition for what the ballot actually does. I’ll explain two damning justifications for making this conceptual distinction.
First, that the ballot should endorse the team that did the better debating is not mutually exclusive with other in-round frameworks. For example: if a plan focus framework is agreed upon by both teams, then the judge is understood to endorse the plan if it’s desirable. The team that wins under this framework is also the team that did the better debating, but the way in which the judge approached evaluating the round had nothing to do with the meta-theoretical standard.
Second, that the ballot should endorse the team that did the debating is purely tautological. In the debate community, we generally agree that the winner of a round is the team that did the better debating. What that better debating means, however, can never be informed by this standard. It only serves as a reminder to the judge about what their ballot symbolizes on a more abstract level. Inside any given round, due to the various arguments that might be made, a ballot can be granted additional meaning and nuance. That means it is not useful to think of this ROTB as theoretical and not definitional–it gives the judge absolutely no guidance as to how to evaluate the debate. To be clear, I’m not defending that “the better debating” is actually an accurate definition of the ballot–see my criticisms in the first version of this article.
If you’re not convinced yet, look at the power of understanding this distinction in practice. Nick Sciullo (and me, in my first whack at this) missed this theoretical distinction, when upon consideration it quickly resolves his criticisms.
His first objection is that language is imprecise, and so the better debating means vastly different things to different judges (Sciullo 38-39). This vagueness, however, is one of the benefits of defining a ballot as endorsing the team that did the better debating. It leaves debaters free to hash out for themselves what that means in any given round through various framework arguments, promoting argumentative creativity. Crucially, it can only do so if we do not view it as a framework argument but rather as a definition of the ballot.
His second objection is that Role of the Ballot claims are somewhat out of control; they are given such immense weight by judges that none of the other substance seems to matter (39-40). This is an important point, and one of the original inspirations for this article. Only after understanding the nuances between the different role of the ballot claims floating around can judges and competitors properly assess how much weight to afford each.
His final objection is that despite its neutrality, this Role of the Ballot does nothing to make judges more objective (40-41). To this I reply, of course it doesn’t! This is the role of framework arguments and judge instruction. A definition of how the ballot operates in debate is not supposed to be able to resolve individual bias; it can only ever provide a guiding meta-framework.
What are the implications of making this distinction?
First, as judges and competitors we should recognize that a ROTB argument that stops at “vote for whoever does the better debating” is simply unresponsive to opposing frameworks. This applies to policy-focused, critical-focused, and even philosophically-focused frameworks that you find more in LD debates. Individuals making this argument without a proper theoretically based framework (plan focus or something else along those lines) should lose significantly more rounds.
Second, debaters should stop using the term “role of the ballot” to make this argument. As the analysis above demonstrates, it can be helpful to remember on a meta-level what the ballot does at the end of the day. Using the language of “definition of the ballot” or some other phrasing would serve to distinguish it from theoretical framework arguments and confuse judges less.
Theoretical Issues: Roles of the Judge
What distinguishes theoretical issues, or what I’m calling framework arguments proper, from the meta-theoretical issues discussed above is the level at which they apply in debates. While a definition of the ballot that says that a ballot signifies who does the better debating, that ballot can mean different things in any given round based on how a judge’s theoretical position is characterized.
The single most important question for a framework interpretation is the role of the judge. If the judge does not know the perspective from which to evaluate arguments in the round, then they can’t determine what to do with their ballot.
To be a good model for debate, a prerequisite should be that the judge’s role is at least somewhat predictable. This is important, as debaters should be able to have a sense before the round to tailor their arguments in such a way to appeal to the perspective of that judge. This makes for better argumentation and clash, both of which are generally considered to be valuable.
One important caveat: predictability is only one factor among many justifications for any given role of the judge. Frameworks that are slightly less predictable could provide educational benefits that overwhelm this downside.
To determine what makes a model’s ROTJ predictable, we need to look at what debaters can anticipate about the perspective any given judge takes.
Perhaps the most obvious starting point is the resolution. It offers a normative question on the desirability of policy action open to interpretation. The judge can be reasonably expected to have something to do with this question and have that decision be informed by the arguments in the round.
That the resolution might be the most obvious starting point for the role of the judge does not make it the only one, nor even the most desirable. What absolutist policymaking frameworks overlook is that a debate judge is many other things besides a policymaker. In many cases, they are much closer to these other things than a policymaker. The most common alternative position (citation needed) besides a policy maker we see argued for in rounds is conceptualizing the judge as an argument critic, or an educator more generally. This makes sense: when the judge decides a round, the feedback and criticism for the individual debaters is arguably practically more valuable than the substantive outcome of the round.
While this is a good start, I want to slightly push back on visualizing the judge’s position as a number line with policymaker and educator on opposite ends. There are other properties all judges possess: they are all humans (hopefully) living in the world, with all the implications that come with that. That’s why more niche frameworks that are less about the judge as argument critic and more appealing to characteristics everyone shares are defensible.
Take, for example, an ROTJ that argues that the judge should decide between competing orientations towards death; while this might not have much to do with the judge as a critical educator OR policymaker, it appeals to the idea that every individual necessarily possesses their own orientations towards death.
Thus, we can visualize the role of the judge in any given framework as lying on a sort of spectrum. You can go further away from the judge as policymaker direction towards any other universal factors about them.
Determining what model is preferable for the judge to use in any given round is then a question of which interpretation of the judge’s role is better, weighing the impacts of predictability (clash, etc.) vs. pedagogical or educational benefits.
Theoretical Issues: Roles of the Ballot
Here we arrive at the second argument debaters label a “role of the ballot,” and the only one I believe is worthy of this designation. This argument as it relates to framework serves as a necessary and logical extension of a role of the judge.
For example, take the judge as a policymaker. When this role is inserted into the confines of a competitive debate round with a winner and a loser, the logical role for the ballot is to express a judgement towards the affirmative policy. If it is a “good idea,” you vote AFF; if not, vote NEG.
We should maintain the label of ROTB for this type of argument because I believe it’s what the phrase most accurately describes. It provides the judge a satisfactory theoretical explanation for how they should perceive the action of casting a ballot in any given round, which helps resolve debates better.
Framing Issues: “Roles of the Ballot”
This theoretical ROTB is different from the third type of argument debaters apply the role of the ballot label to (I called these in-round ROTB arguments in my first draft). Instead of being grounded in a theoretical argument about the judge’s perspective and ballot, appeals to “vote for whoever best opposes settler colonialism” or “vote for whoever best represents the world” function as framing arguments for judges’ ballots.
These framing arguments are always present, even if not explicitly stated. Take a policy v. policy round, where both sides have agreed to understand the judge as a policymaker. Thus, the ROTB is to vote AFF if the plan is desirable. The framing arguments come in to help the judge determine what it means for the plan to be desirable. Usually, this means looking at whether or not it’s justified under a consequentialist, act-utilitarian framework. This needn’t always be the case, however. Philosophical “frameworks” in events like Lincoln-Douglas are really just glorified framing arguments. This is because if you strip them down, the role of the judge and the ballot are identical to a “util” debate–the judge is a policymaker, and is simply using a non-utilitarian framing to decide whether or not the plan is a “good idea”.
This distinction between theoretical ROTBs and ROTB as framing arguments matters a great deal.
First, framing arguments are not a replacement for a theoretical framework. A judge’s role can only be resolved by appeals to clash, fairness, education, or other meta-impacts. Arguing that plan focus might pave over everyday forms of violence is a critique of the utilitarian and extinction first framing the affirmative is using, not their framework.
This is the missing piece of Sciullo’s analysis; in abandoning the use of the meta-ROTB arguments as theoretical frameworks (a good move), he substitutes framing arguments instead.
Nowhere is this more clear than in the first example he gives for what a round might look like:
By way of example, the Affirmative Team (AFF) in the 1st Affirmative Constructive offers spoken word poetry about rejecting structural racism by police. The Negative Team (NEG) offers a framework argument that indicates the AFF must offer a policy option for the critic/judge to vote on and also offers an argument about the spoken word poetry’s relationship to the Resolution—a Topicality violation. Then, the 2nd AFF speaker argues that the role of the ballot is to vote for whoever does best addresses anti-racism. The 2nd AFF speaker then indicates how to evaluate anti-racism analysis (comparison of evidence, impact framing, argumentative fidelity, translatableness to outside the round action, etc.). The 2nd AFF speaker also provides examples of how the critic/judge could do these things (“The team that raises issues that prevent people of color from being killed in the world, which is an impact occurring while we debate, is doing the best debating about anti-racism.” “Ask yourself what team helps the debaters in this round avoid impacts. I’m not afraid of being first struck, but I am afraid of being shot when i pull my wallet out at a traffic stop.” “Ask yourself if you went back to your community and read the 1A the IN, which would interest people more?” “If anti-racism isn’t central to the speech, then the NEG has done a worse job advocating for anti-racism.” “If our authors represent different positionalities and their authors don’t then you should vote for us because their evidence presentation is not anti-racist.”). (41-42)
Sciullo, Nick J. “Toward a Theory of “The Role of the Ballot is to Vote for Whoever Does the Best Debating”.” The Forensic of Pi Kappa Delta 101.2 (2016). https://www.academia.edu/35120585/Toward_a_Theory_of_The_Role_of_the_Ballot_is_to_Vote_for_Whoever_Does_the_Best_Debating_.
In this debate, the affirmative is offering a framing argument, not a framework argument. They lack a theoretical grounding in what the perspective of the judge is or what their ballot should signify as a result of that.
Second, understanding the difference between theoretical framework arguments and framing arguments can help debaters win more and judges suffer less. In a clash debate where both sides agree that climate change is the biggest impact (say it causes extinction for the AFF and settler violence for a neg K), making framing arguments about the winner of the round being the team who’s advocacy solves climate change best is a smart strategic decision. Just like other forms of impact calculus, it helps the judge understand which arguments to prioritize and how they interact. A judge with a more nuanced understanding of framework can also parse out which are true theoretical framework arguments and which are framing arguments masquerading under the guise of a “role of the ballot,” and accord them weigh in their decision calculus as such.
Conclusions
If you take one thing away from this article, it is that language matters. Assigning the same phrase of “role of the ballot” to what are three substantively different arguments has been a disaster for popular understandings of framework as it operates in debates. My advice? Use “definition of the ballot” for meta-claims and some sort of “that means in this round doing x” for framing. We can save “the role of the ballot” for where it really matters.
One reply on “Framework Part 1.1: 3 Roles of the Ballot”
This is a cool article! It verbalizes very well the kind of disconnect between “the role of the ballot is to vote for who did the better debating” and maybe more ‘substantive’ framework debating that I’ve seen.