In a Democracy, Voting ought to be Compulsory. (LD Debate)

My name is Redmancometh and I will be debating as the Neg. Road map: I will first define my value,criterion, and off-case. I will then deconstruct my opponents case, and proceed with the negative constructive. First my opponents burden is highly abusive. It pre-supposes vc. There are certain key definitions required to properly evaluate the terms of the resolution, and these definitions are as follows: Ought: Used to express duty or obligation. (Black's Law) My opponent does not offer a definition, so extend my definition, and do not allow my opponent to provide an alternative definition, as it puts an fair burden on the negative to defend against the definition. The negative effectively would have 1 less round with which to contend the definition. Duty: A moral or legal obligation; a responsibility. (Merriam-Webster) Extend this definition as well, as my opponent failed to provide a definition. Morality: The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct. I accept my opponents definitions of vote, Democracy, and compulsory. The neg contends the highest value in this round is Morality. There are 3 reasons you should use my value: A) Morality is intrinsic to the resolution as the term "ought" is used in place of "should." B) My opponent provides no definitions for "ought" or "duty," and defining a word in the 2AC is considered highly abusive. My opponent may argue about my definition but may not provide an alternative definition. C) My opponent's value has not even been defined, so he doesn't even know what he wants to achieve. D) He links his value to America which is a highly culture-centric view, as neither his advocacy nor the resolution discuss America. E) My opponent never tells us why achieving his value is a good thing. Further he never links his value to the resolution, so it cannot be the value used in this round - there is no clear manner in which the 2 are related. The neg will use the criterion Individual rights. This criterion ought be the highest in the round for the following reasons: 1) Morality deals with rights and obligations of the agent of action. 2) By virtue of being a democracy all reasonable scenarios involving democracies will value rights, as the right to vote is a right, and is intrinsically valued by any democracy. They all value at least one right, and the resolution directly states it by specifying "Democracy." Aff Contention one: A) Just because there is a lack of revolts or riots doesn't mean there isn't something wrong. B) The affirmative never gives us a reason that higher voter turnout is even a good thing. C) The aff never links this contention to his criterion. He does not tell us how voter turnout achieves progress. He does not achieve his criterion or mine. The result is essentially a no-impact argument, as it cannot be weighed. D) In an oligarchy the people would have absolutely no say. If you were to use the logic of the affs argument all representative democracies are "just big oligarchies." E) Ignore the "The News" card as it provides no offense, as there are no statistics, and he's not using the card to create warrants he's just restating his claim with someone else's words. Aff C2: The Lijphart card does not state how low turnout distorts political influence, or how it harms poor people, or how it destroys local governance. It's a bunch of claims with no warrants, and drops. The Engleen card even if accepted 100% at face value doesn't matter. There are absolutely no warrants to any of the claims, and none of the impacts matter because there is no link to the criterion or value. So even if my opponent wins this card he gets nothing for it. "Because compulsory voting raises turnout considerably, it is able to enhance the democratic values of political participation, representativeness and equality. " We don't know how it enhances the democratic values of participation, it doesn't even specify what those values are! Representativeness doesn't seem to have a proper definition that I can find, and I don't think it's a real word. Either way, whatever it is, it's not intrinsically good, so it needs analysis to be offense. Equality is not a universally valued concept. In certain cases (the battlefield for example) it can be extremely harmful. Without an advocacy, claiming the society values an abstract concept like equality is incredibly abusive. So there is no defined "society" we're talking about. Since it's a completely nebulous concept the aff could use this and claim anything with any impact that he wanted. In LD debate statistics aren't used a whole lot, but certain arguments require them. Specifically "In this respect, I have argued that compulsory voting sends a powerful signal to the people that each and every vote matters." This is another claim lacking a warrant. Aff C3: Cross apply my previous argument about the aff failing to link to his V or VC. Cross apply the argument on the aff C2 about requiring statistics. Just because something is on a card does not make it concrete. This isn't CX debate you can't just quote someone saying "x is good and y is bad" and use that as offense! If we don't know how it leads to end X or end Y how are we supposed to dissect the logic? Further the New York Times is a newspaper. It is reporting on a study in this article, and yet the study isn't contained in the card. This is clearly intentional abuse. Further the card about Australia is purely the opinion of a single person. Unfortunately even the opinion of a high-level individual doesn't matter very much without either logical warrants or statistics. Further, the 70% statistic is intentionally misleading, and the author (not the aff, the author of the card). I don't know if the aff quite knows how to use cards just yet. The negative will now construct his case starting with an off-case observational framework followed by contentions. Contention 1: Forced voting amounts to Government-Sponsored Slavery The government in this case is forcing the individual to use their own time to work towards the ends of the government. There is no tangible reward for doing so, and therefore it is essentially temporary slavery. This links directly back to my criterion as it is violating rights of autonomy. Contention 2: Forced voting leads to more uninformed votes It can be empirically observed that there are a lot of people uninformed when it comes to politics. In the status quo in my opponents seeming advocacy these people simply choose not to cast their votes. Australia is a perfect example of a mandatory voting system gone absolutely wrong. For example, if you are a criminal, the police can search your house at any point without a warrant as a "check-up." Further, the press has no freedom, and there is no guarantee of the freedom of speech. How could this happen in so short a period? In only 2 decades? What has changed? Voting is now mandatory. This impacts back directly to my criterion, as it leads to violations of basic human rights (Freedom of speech etc) Since ought is the term used by the resolution it is intrinsically tied to morality. *Since I have established that the only proper way to evaluate whether or not we are being moral is maximizing human rights. Further, it establishes a clear scenario in which the values the neg puts forth are violated. Contention 3: The majority of the population is uneducated In any first world country there is what are known as "economic stratos" which are essentially class systems. At the high end of this system you have a small percentage of people (ie the 1%), followed by a larger class who are also educated, but not as wealthy. According to the CIA fact book less than 40% of people have higher education, and nearly 8% of people are illiterate. The negative posits the question: Do we want illiterate individuals to be voting? The burden is on the aff to prove that illiterate individuals voting leads to the maximization of human rights.