The new DDO Voting System is superior to the old

Thanks Zarroette. I. One man, two votesThe old system gave voters discretion on when to award points. The result of this is that since some judges are less reluctant to award points over minor grammar errors or one side having more sources than another, the value of votes gets skewed. A good example of this is GWL's vote in the Roy-Mikal debate[1]. Because GWL slapped onto his RFD "[Roy's] sources are better. And, Con's conduct was rude in my opinion." the value of his vote doubled, making it worth two of whiteflame's, who gave extensive reasoning for his decision in the comments section. The worst part about this is that despite all of us knowing GWL is a biased and dishonest voter, there is simply no grounds to delete such a vote as he justified the points given. We shouldn't have a system that cheapens the value of good votes to give power to poor ones. Moreover even if we were to work under the assumption that all voters were honest, since people have different paradigms on when to award the other points due to there being no specific bright lines on when to award them, the old system at the very least gives some voters more power than others for no real reason. Under the new system, a poorly reasoned ideological vote can be countered by one good vote, every time. Compare this to the old system where it often takes two good votes to outweigh a bad one and it's clear which one is preferable, particularly with the voting deficit we have on this site. The practical result of the old system is to make bad votes worth more than good ones.Another point to consider is that under the old system, I can justifiably award points without even reading the debate. I didn't read Mikal's debate with Lordgrae about Squirtle[2]. However looking at his first round, I saw he forgot to capitalize "i" so I awarded his opponent the Spelling and Grammar points. Airmax is powerless to remove my vote if he follows his own policy because I followed the rules: I justified each point I awarded. We should not allow legitimate votes of any size to someone who did not read the debate. Another flaw in the old system is that judges aren't required to fill out the entire ballot. If I wanted, I could vote someone down every single time they have a debate by awarding their opponents every category that is remotely close and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Even if there is a clear winner on arguments or any other category, I can abstain from voting on arguments and vote down a person I dislike by scanning the debate for spelling errors or missing commas, for minor rule violations or stretched insults, by counting the sources or deciding that one source was "really good" and voting on that. In Mikal's recent debate about the existence of God[3], his opponent made no argument and forfeited the entire thing. Mikal forgot the apostrophe in "Occam's" so I abstained from voting on conduct and arguments and voted on S/G alone. I could do the same thing on contentious and close debates, and my votes couldn't be deleted because a voter can abstain for any reason. The amount of discretion the old system gives judges makes it so easy to vote poorly that it's a wonder it's been allowed to stand for so long. II. Strategic voting It's no secret that DDO has its share of poor and ideological voters. Under the old system, these voters are handed a blank check to increase their voting power because, as Airmax has stated[4], as long as the RFD gives a reason for each point awarded, it is considered valid and not subject to deletion. The goal of the ideological voter is to give as many points to his favored position as possible, and therefore he is going to award as many points as he can justify, even if the justification is extremely thin. The old system gives bad voters every power to do this. Compare this to the new system where a vote is a vote and you can see which one is superior in mitigating bad voting. Moreover the old system encourages bad voting among otherwise good voters. There is a spectrum of dishonesty, on the one end being voters who will vote with every point they can to their favored side, and on the other the voters who will not give any unjustified points for any reason. The vast majority of people fall somewhere in the middle. The old system encourages bad voting in virtually everyone except the extremely honest end of the spectrum. The old system can be looked at through a game theory perspective. It's a prisoners dilemma, because the ideal strategy is for everyone to vote fairly but because voters know that some people are going to strategically fudge their votes to make them more valuable, the dominant strategy becomes going tit for tat and doing the same. I've competed in and judged real world debate for years and cannot claim to be above the temptation to add some points to my vote when I see that the side I thought won is losing. This is because everyone is biased to believe that the side they thought won actually did win, and view them losing as someone being unjustly deprived of a victory. Since the old system makes votes unequal, voters are incetivized to add points to their votes even when they're unjustified. Creating a fluff vote on something such as conduct or sources is *ridiculously* easy. Cons conduct "felt" rude to you. Con had an extra source. You feel Pro utilized her sources better. The new system is preferable because it wipes out a huge subset of ideological voting. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that there are no clear guidelines on when to vote on each category. In the forums, Zarroette argued that someone having more sources shouldn't be grounds for the sources points. I agree, however others don't and there is no guideline on when to vote on which category. We should have a policy that removes as many tools as possible from the hands of biased voters, not one that gives them a veritable toolbox of weapons. III. Competition and the nature of debate The nature of debate is that of discourse and discussion. Debate is *all* about the arguments. One of the biggest problems with the old system is that the majority of the ballot value derived from items that the debaters do not argue in round. At most, there is smattering of discussion of who should win the other points in the last round because the purpose of debate is the exchange of arguments. This is bad because it assigns a majority of the ballot value to points not argued for in round. It's self evidently ridiculous that I can award someone 33% of the value of the arguments point by skimming the debate and noticing they used the wrong "your". Things like poor spelling or conduct weaken an arguments potency. Having no sources in most debates where they are relevant like policy discussions would destroy one's arguments, indeed their opponent could flatly deny everything for lack of documentation. These factors are still considered in the judges ballot under the new system, they just aren't overemphasized to an absurd degree as they were under the old system. It's absurd that someone could, in a debate--an activity solely based around argumentation, win the most compelling arguments but still lose the ballot overall.We should also presume an affirmative ballot because every real world debate league uses an up/down voting style like the new system. My opponent has quite the mountain to climb to prove that everyone in the history of debate except for Phil, the sites creator, got it wrong. We should look to real world debate leagues on how to judge.The resolution is affirmed. 1. http://www.debate.org...2. http://www.debate.org...3. http://www.debate.org...4. http://www.debate.org...