Debate.org Should Abolish Open Voting in Favor of Judge "Select Winner" Voting

Since my opponent has run into some troubles, I will also be outlining my constructive arguments, so as not to profit from their time shortage. Examples will this be presented later.A short foreword: The resolution contains multiple arguments. I do not have to disprove all of them to win this debate, one alone would be sufficient to break the chain of evidence. I will try to formulate a broad stance nonetheless.I agree that Open Voting is to be abolished.Yet, in favour of something else! I will argue below why Select Judge Voting is just as worthless. For now, I present my case for an Expert Jury system.PLAN: "Expert Jury" system allows debaters to nominate themselves as experts on certain broad fields (science, trivia, entertainment, religion, philosophy etc.). To qualify, they have to participate in at least three debates on that topic WITHOUT ANY FORFEIT FROM EITHER SIDE before being granted voting privileges FOR THAT FIELD. (Note: for the transition period from the current system to the new one, we will accept the current judging systems until a sufficiently large board of experts has been built up. The candidates will retain voting privileges for the old system while it is in place. Then, when enough jurors are found, the new system is introduced completely. The exact number has to be determined at another time.)Once a debate enters the voting period, an uneven number of jurors is selected and notified. To guarantee that only active users will be selected, the system picks the first jurors who log in and are not currently judging a debate. If we do not have enough jurors to make that work, this site is going down anyway. Voting is mandatory. Whoever enlists for the Expert Jury has to vote and can only quit after judging the ongoing debate. Solutions for problems that are to be expected are at hand, but will be presented in a successive round.Judging should follow the 7-point-system, but the Expert Jury would still work with the "Select Winner" option.ELO scores are to be abolished.SOLVENCY: "Debaters would probably take pride in being" EXPERT "judges and try to build good reputations online for being objective and neutral judges." (I thank my opponent for this great way of putting things, but I believe my concept supersedes his). This leads to a higher involvement of the judges, and pointless arguments in the comments and forums about the qualification of the judges would become less frequent.Unvoted debates would not have to be announced in the forum. They have become a matter of politics, with the current president making it a campaign goal to have no unvoted debates. The problem would be completely solved by an Expert Jury system, leading to less frustration among users.Only users with some experience on this site will be able to judge, making troll votes less frequent and nigh impossible. The quality of the votes will improve. Apology posts containing reasons for not voting will stop. Everything will become easier and less subject of conflict after voting.With the 7-point-system for voting, RFDs (reasons for decision) are more elaborate, building trust in the experts and educating inexperienced users on how to avoid certain mistakes the next time. Education is the main task of the Jury, while delivering a good debate is the job of the participants. Only with detailed RFDs, containing a judgement on conduct and language skills as well, can members improve their debating skills. Shorter RFDs leave them to learn all by themselves, slowing down improvement.Being judged by certified experts will encourage debaters to give it their all, increasing the quality of debates overall.It would also lessen the stress of wondering whether the selected judges from "Select Judge" will understand the topic at hand. This is particularly useful for new users who cannot select judges for lack of familiarity with the established members.The Expert Jury system has the definite advantage of basically having been tested in the real world: in court trials, the layman jury is given time and materials to become experts before passing their verdict. They are chosen randomly to prevent any corruption. So, the verdict is reached by randomly chosen laymen who familiarized themselves with a subject at hand. This is what my system would mimic, and there's little reason to suggest a system of that kind would not be just.Against "Select Judge" with ELO in place and "Select Winner" optionHarms1. Select Judge Voting, once made mandatory, is susceptible to varying forms of corruptiona) favoritism towards established members due to established friendshipsb) double accounts - we have several users who own parallel accounts. They could nominate themselves as judges, and nobody could tell. Only in randomizing the selection of judges are we relatively certain that no one votes for themselves!c) bloc parties - people who want to belong to the inner circle of established users, who want to work themselves up through the ranks, may easily be nominated as judges by friends of those members and be promised a place in those ranks for voting for a certain member. This is a particular risk since the established users communicate with each other outside of this site and can thus make promises surreptitiously. This leads to the formation of bloc parties that unanimously will support certain high-ranking users.2. The decision how the winner was chosen has to be transparent to counter any form of corruptiona) Choice of a winner will always be influenced by multiple factors, including personality/conduct. Voting should always represent the actual process of opinion-forming in order to prevent mere sympathy votes.b) When a weak debater wins over a new user because he is friends with the judges, this discourages people from debating on this site at all, since they get the feeling they can never beat the established debaters. We will thus have less members willing to stay on this site, and that would be totally against the very idea.3. ELO ranking deceives new usersa) Since ELO increases steadily even when beating new users, the ELO score tells nothing about the actual quality of a debater. The longer you stay, the higher the ELO.b) New users who don't know anyone on this site will believe that a high ELO makes a better judge, and will not question the choice of judges or nominate own candidates for judging, thus turning voting over to the "elite" of the site completely, giving them too much power.4. Delays are discouraginga) In the "Select Judge" system, you cannot simply start debating, just like it happened in this debate. Once a user accepts, they cannot even type "I accept" before at least one judge has agreed. Now, if the selected judges are on vacation or something, the debate may never start. If the time for giving arguments is short, a user might involuntarily forfeit a round, lest they check the site over and over again, to find out whether they finally may officially accept the debate. This is very frustrating, especially to new users. They come here to debate, not wait for judges they do not know. Selection of the judges has to be randomized among qualified experts AFTER the debate.b) If the judges do not accept, a lot of time passes, only for the debate to be cancelled. This would discourage even more experienced users.This site needs new users, and happy ones at that. The "Select Judge" system is only of slight advantage to established users, to new ones it is a discouraging disaster.It is thus better to abolish ELO than the 7-point-voting, and corruption can only be countered by randomizing voting. In this respect, both existing voting systems show the exact same weaknesses, and neither is of advantage over the other. My opponent's proposal would not ON AVERAGE deliver an improvement.As long as people can voluntarily decide to judge on a debate, there will always be a change of corruption and trolling. That is the core problem, and my opponent's proposal does nothing to remedy it. New users will still be at a distinct disadvantage, and that causes the current flood of new users who start debates, maybe finish one, but then never return or deliver multiple forfeits.Thanks all for reading. I look forward to my opponent's complete arguments and rebuttal.