I think that this is a great public forum topic: it relates to a current event that will educate students on some of the nuanc
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Lesson 4.2 Day 3
| 13NFL1-Compulsory Voting Page 21 of 163 www.victorybriefs.com This topic is ripe for positions that specify or advocate a particular plan of action. This is true because the resolution is a question of implementing a certain type of policy, a voting policy, and such debates are probably most strategic and potentially most educational in the context of a particular policy. Even if you are not running a plan aff, however, it could be strategic to specify some elements of your policy. Here area couple issues that any aff should consider specifying even if you aren’t running an outright plan (1) Conscientious objectors. One objection that negatives could make is that certain people have reasons to not want to vote. I’m sure that there are some religious or cultural groups that could be cited here. This makes the violation-of-autonomy argument stronger. So, will your mandatory voting policy have an exception for conscientious objectors There is precedent for this in mandatory programs like the US. draft ( See Military Selective Service Act (50 App. U.S.C.A. § 451 et seq. [1967]). (2) Voting Day. It maybe logistically difficult in many democracies for voting to be made mandatory. In the US, it would require a complete overhaul of the way that voting day works. The system we have now doesn’t even properly accommodate the tiny percentage of people who turnout to the polls, hence annual stories of long lines and extensions past normal hours at polling stations. Certain affirmatives need to be particularly careful about this. For example, affirmatives may argue that a problem in voting has been historic underrepresentation of certain groups of people, like low-income citizens. Low-income citizens are kept from voting by, for example, being unable to leave their jobs in order to go to a polling station. Unless the affirmative has a mechanism to prevent this problem, they aren’t solving their harms. (3) Enforcement. In order for something to be mandatory, it must be backed by the force of law to some degree. In your program, will people who fail to vote be fined, be subject to mandatory community service, be shot on sight If you fail to specify this, you leave the negative able to say that the policy simply wouldn’t be enforceable and thus would fail. The affirmative could really get into trouble here if they don’t have a good Voting Day procedure and their advocacy is about under-representation. For example, imagine that the affirmative specifies a fine as enforcement but doesn’t say how low-income citizens are going to all get to the polls. Then the affirmative is advocating fining low-income citizens, which is certainly going to be a harm under the AC framework. |