The DDO debating system is fair

Rebuttal: 1) Regarding my opponents point that it is the voter not the system which is unfair. I maintain a system which leads to unfairness is unfair. Consider the following extreme example: consider a court system in which the jury is told that if they acquit the defendant they will be awarded a million $. would you say that the system is fair its just the jury which is unfair, obviously no. One more example to be shore my point gets across. Consider that it has been shown that a blue court room results in the jury being more sympathetic to one side. For the court room to be painted blue would be considered unfair not merely the jury, for being affected by the color blue. 2)same as above. 3)My opponent seems not to understand my point here, I will attempt to clarify. There are 2 points here: a) The fact that there is no alternative does not make it fair. I think this is obvious, I see no way to make this point more clear. b)even if there is no way to make it that no, one side goes last it is possible to make other changes to counter the last word advantage. The following is a sample listing of suggestions proposed: b1)The following was from CD-Host in forums: "Its interesting I was thinking about asymmetric debate systems this morning myself. Yes I would agree that last word means a lot. For example when I used to debate it was AC1 NC1 AC2 NC2 NR1 AR1 NR2 AR2. What I was thinking of for DDO was 4 round structure Rules & topic(con) AC1 NR1 AC2 NC1 AR1 NC2 AR2 with an asymmetric win criteria. Negative wins on either a strictly better counter case or a successful rebuttal. (i.e. affirmative plan is bad or negative has a better plan). The following idea was from F-16_Fighting_Falcon: What if the debate follows a formula really closely by keeping each round for specific purposes? Both get equal opportunity. The only risk is that it might possibly feel disjointed for the voters? The following from Ore_Ele: Or just having (if R1 is for acceptance and not arguing). IR2 (instigator R2) be X characters (could be 2,000 or 4,000 or 8,000 or whatever they set it to. CR2 (contender R2) be 2*X characters. IR3 be 2*X characters. CR3 be 2*X characters. IR4 be 2*X characters. CR4 be X characters. That way, the contender has the room to address the Instigators arguments and make their own, and both sides get a grand total of 5*X character space to write in. This would obviously be adjusted to fit the number of rounds (be they 3 rounds, 2 rounds, 5 rounds, etc). There could also be a field that allows R1 to be acceptance (so this character count method applies only to rounds 2 and on) that is only 1,000 or 2,000 characters max (plenty for rules, definition, etc. statistics: My opponent makes the following points: 1)unfairness in voter not system. 2)Not quoting source. 3)other factors that explain the statistics. My responses are as follows: 1)Already dealt with. 2)I am sorry, I thought my source was obvious. For your convenience I will provide a link http://www.debate.org...... to verify, simply click on each name, and from that page you can access all their debates. 3)(1st as an aside I am appalled at the conduct in the debate quoted in source #1. Taking advantage of some kid from India's lack of perfect English is wrong and a practice that should be stooped on ddo, it is unwelcoming and unfair send the guy a message, help him, as you commendably did in #2, but at the very least don't take advantage.) My response to this is 1)With such a large gap of nearly twice as many contenders to instigators winning can hardly be blamed on these factors alone. In addition there are some minor factors which would cause instigator to win these include a)more research time. b)instigator more frequently has BoP. Despite these reasons, Contender wins nearly twice as often that can hardly be explained by my opponents reason alone. 2)Lastly since I have countered on the reason front, that there is a last word factor, and the statistical evidence points to a contender advantage, it would seem reasonable that it is indeed this "last word factor" which is contributing to that large imbalance, even if it is not the sole reason. Argument: I would like to provide some cases that imply last word advantage: http://www.debate.org... I am focusing on the voting section. note those who voted in my favor where 2 of the senior, well known and well respected debaters on ddo, cliff. stamp and Roy lathem. Both of them voted in my favor and gave detailed reasons for doing so. Despite this I lost the debate bec. some kids couldn't keep the entirety of the debate in their mind and where swayed by "the last word". http://www.debate.org... my opponent did not even debate much (instead just harped on definitions) till the final round after which I could not respond. http://www.debate.org... see comments after debate where it is clear the damage of not having last word. http://www.debate.org... Note in round 4 my entire last argument was completely dropped. Not a word. I pointed this out in the debate itself in round 5. yet none of the voters realized this glaring drop. The only plausible explanation is they forgot and were swayed by the power of "the last word".