Why Ballots Just Ruin Everything

Ballots shape more than just the activity. 

Debate is the only activity where you really can sometimes just “work harder” in order to win more, and there’s (at least perceived) almost a direct translation between the two. But is that promise of success really worth what we sacrifice? 

It seems the halls of the debate community always echo with the sentiment that that success is everything and that one's value as a debater isn’t really anything if you don’t have TOC Bids, qualifications to the various tournaments like TOC, Nats, TFA, or high elo on a random ranking site. While debate may be “fun”, “educational”, or any other benefit that people debating put onto it, ultimately at the end of every debate there’s a winner and a loser. 

The “ballot constraint” makes it so that the competitive nature of the activity kinda overpowers almost every other factor because people don’t like losing, so eventually people develop to searching for the best method to win, eventually carving out their own “niche.” Think of a K debater, LARPers, or theory debaters. Most often the reason people fall into these groups is because they think they can do their best at that style of debate, and thus accrue the most ballots. 

The large issue with the entire system is that people really like winning, and no matter what kind of debater you are, the more work you do, the more likely you are to win. No one comes out of the womb being able to give a really persuasive final focus, or a 2NR that just completely leaves the 2AR with no path to victory. These skills are developed after a combination of both experience and work, but they intertwine. 

Is it really all worth it though? The work often manifests in hours of drills, sacrificing the precious downtime at tournaments to think over RFDs from previous rounds and examine flows, or for some people it even manifests in cutting hundreds of cards with the idea that it increases the possibility of having the right piece of evidence at the right time to respond to the right case. For some debaters who really want to win, it will be a combination of all these things and more.

But success isn’t all we claim it to be, especially when it bleeds into other aspects of our life. Debaters I know eventually start cutting cards in class, push off/procrastinate on homework, and quit basically every other extracurricular activity they have in favor of debate, because winning really is addicting for some people, especially with the debate community’s almost reinforcing of it with the aforementioned “skill metrics” and outside validation.

This culture of success affects those who don’t participate as well, often leading to burnout when they constantly feel like they just aren’t good enough because they don’t have the accolades of their peers, even when they do actually put in the same amount of effort as them. It’s almost a double bind of “Do I work really hard and feel like shit” or “Do I try to cut myself some slack and feel like shit because I’m not growing at the pace of those around me.? 

A lot of debaters need to reconsider how much success really means to them. Debate, for a lot of us, leaves our lives after the 4 years of high school, even for the most committed it’s done after the 4 years of college unless you’re one of the rare few who goes so far as to coach others beyond your college career. After you graduate, you really won’t remember what happened in doubles of that random bid tournament, but you will remember your mental state throughout your years of high school, and that’s far more important.