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 37 of 163 www.victorybriefs.com The big offense being of course that we have a duty to fight against such oppression and voting affirmative provides for more voice and a chance for change while the negative side merely rests complacent about it all in the face of evidence showing such injustice. Ok, so perhaps it will not go exactly like that, but I think such commentary should get your wheels turning about the possibilities of offense outside of genocide and extinction claims. The negative should have no shortage of solid offense either. The negative debaters can frame positions around autonomy and voter rights. They can complain that forcing voters to vote does not guarantee the voters make a more democratic decision – in fact, it may lead to the contrary according to some studies and in the rush to have more bodies at the poll we may actually only succeed in increasing the likelihood of a minority candidate winning the election. In someways, this could be worse. The negative ought to construct entire positions that are functionally link turns to affirmative offense. This will both serve to place strong duress upon all of the affirmative links as well as to offer the negative additional time on the AC flow for dismantling the framework and value structure. For example, a negative position built upon claims that compulsory voting leads to invalid decisions and causes many voters to vote when ill-equipped to do so, could function as severing the links affirmative has to a more representative form of government and thereby allow negative additional time while attacking the AC value structure since their negative case would provide embedded clash with parts of the AC proper. Or, to counter such powerful offense as the affirmative position I mentioned about racism being entrenched in many current political systems, the negative can argue that such problems will only be masked by compulsory voting, giving us a sense of change but all the while still allowing those with money and power to succeed the easier because now they do not even need to placate to the center, they can rally their well-organized base and run the gambit. Likewise, affirmative debaters must be aware of the many arguments which seem to be addressed in the literature such as voter turnout increases and the reliability of the election outcomes. With so many of the benefits claimed by affirmative authors being rendered dubious by recent studies, affirmative debaters will need to do their homework to find strong positions. I suggest staying closer to the duty debates. Affirmatives can gain good ground by arguing in favor of a civic duty – going back to the Singer v US decision about public and private benefits from rights. This kind of position has the added benefit of being well-aimed at an obvious line of negative ground, autonomy. From such a case position, the affirmative can access a number of benefits and a large amount of philosophical ground for their value structures. The findings about invalid votes and turnouts can be more or less counted as worth nothing to the affirmative since those would only matter if the duty did not exist. If you answer, what ought a democracy to do, it does not really matter the results – or at least so the affirmative spin would go. Negative will |