The practice of only voting in favour of your friends should not be acceptable

In the comments, Con and I agreed to the following debate structure: Round 1: Con will accept and present his arguments. Round 2: Pro will present her arguments. Con will rebut Pro's arguments. Round 3:Pro will rebut Con's arguments. Con will defend his arguments and conclude (no new arguments). Round 4: Pro will defend her arguments and conclude (no new arguments). Con must forfeit the last round. =Introduction= Voting on debates is an integral part of debate.org (DDO). There are not only rules around voting (1), but these rules are intensely enforced through vote moderation (2). Individuals are also required to provide a reason for decision (RFD) or risk having that vote removed. It is clear that DDO users take pride in a voting system that decides the winner of debates based on merit. However, there are users--past and present--who have argued that it is acceptable to vote only in favour of their friends and never vote against them. This practice should be unacceptable because: =Arguments= 1. If everyone engaged in the behaviour, debates would be decided by who has the most friends. If we apply Kant's maxim of universalizability (3), "an act is only permissible if one is willing for the maxim that allows the action to be a universal law by which everyone acts." With everyone refusing to vote against their friends, DDO users with many friends would have an unfair advantage to win debates. Consider the following scenario: 10 members vote on a debate. Half believe Pro won, and half believe Con won. In an unbiased judging scenario, we would observe a tie. In a biased judging scenario where each of the aforementioned judges will only vote for Pro if they think he won and abstain from voting if they think he lost, the worst Pro can do is tie, and the best Con can do is tie. This system would be unfair if even a single user engaged in such favouritism. Close debates are often decided by the presence (or absence) of a single vote, and thus depend on the impartiality of voters. Predeterminations regarding who individuals will or will not vote for necessarily imbalance the voting field and undermine the very purpose of debate. Such is the outcome of a preference-based voting system: Friends are benefitted at best, and unharmed at worst. When users withhold their votes, non-friends tie at best, even if they win. This is the very definition of unfair voting. 2. It will discourage users from debating against certain opponents. People put time and effort into their debates, and expect the voting process to be fair and balanced. However, when one contender has allies on the site who only vote in their favour and never against them, it is likely to create an atmosphere of favouritism around voting and discourage other members from debating against that person. Consider it yourself: If you knew that a particular user had friends who would not vote against him, would you bother to debate him? Would you at least request that the biased voter not judge the debate? Not only is this sort of bias a detriment to the debating process, but it also has a negative impact on users' enjoyment of the site, which in turn would have a negative impact on the site's quality as a whole. 3. It reduces voter credibility. Users should rightfully question the credibility of those who selectively votes for other users. By selectively voting based on their relationships, these users introduce outside information into the debate, which sways their decision-making. Thus, they demonstrate that they cannot be impartial judges and that their votes for their friends cannot be trusted. Although some would like to believe there is only one "true" winner of a debate, the nature of debate is that each side often believes they have won. Many debates are close, due to the nature of ethics, rhetoric, and similar levels of skill (4). If the winner of a debate were always cut and dry, there would be no need for debate. As such, there is a lot of subjectivity involved in deciding the winner of a debate. Subjectivity allows room for bias, and a DDO user who has such a close relationship with another user that he refuses to vote against the other user, will likely subjectively determine that the user won more often than not. =Conclusion= I have demonstrated that the process of selective voting damages multiple areas of the site; it harms debaters (who would be unfairly judged), and it harms the reputation, purpose, and enjoyment of DDO as a whole. What makes DDO a "community" is that several members have formed relationships with the people they meet here. What makes DDO a quality website, however, is that the users have the integrity not to allow such relationships to unfairly taint the act of unbiased judging and debating. To do otherwise should be unacceptable! =Sources= 1. http://tinyurl.com... 2. http://tinyurl.com... 3. http://tinyurl.com... 4. http://tinyurl.com...