Members should be allowed to see who voted for who.

Hello Blond_guy. I am not too good at debating, but I would love to take up your offer to debate this topic. I'm a bit nervous about the entire thing, but I'll give it a try. It is true that in this site, debate.org, that some people have a tendency to vote for whatever side they believe in rather than which contender poses the better argument. In the debate "The Nazis Were Evil" (1), kvaughan conducted an interesting experiment whether or not people would vote for a particular side because of a superior argument, or a personal belief. While the people who voted for a superior argument outnumbered the people who voted for a single cause by four, as of 9:37 1.28.08, it was indeed disturbing to see that 13 people voted on an argument solely due to personal belief. In your argument on patriotism (2), I believe the same thing occurred on your debate as well. In general, people like to vote on things based off of personal opinion rather than superior argument. While it is in the interests of the users to win a debate due to a superior argument, I doubt that listing the names of the people who had voted on a particular side would change anything. You said that, "I'm curious to know what 4 idiots voted either without looking at the arguments."(5) Would curiosity justify a breach of privacy? First off, the system that debate.org uses, is a similar system that world governments use worldwide. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "periodic and genuine elections... shall be held by secret vote." (3) The United Nations states that anonymity is crucial to a genuine election. Why? Consider if this site, debate.org, allowed the posting of peoples' names. If you had the names of these, "4 idiots", what exactly would you do? From what you've said about these "idiots" who "liked to take up on stevster's bribe to "suck [their] **** clean""(5), it seems that you would harass or demean whomever voted for stevster. According to the debate.org terms of use, "You agree to not use the Service to harass or "stalk" anyone." (4) Debate.org protects the names of the users in order to protect them from harassment or attack. On top of that, people who voted on a controversial debate would be harassed or attacked because of their vote, whether or not they voted for a superior argument or their beliefs. In fact, you, according to your statements (5) would feel pretty angry at the people who voted against you. You are not alone, many people would not feel particularly tender towards the people who voted against them. This fear would drive people away from voting on a controversial debate, not just the people who would vote for their beliefs only, but also the people who would vote for a better argument. Revealing the names of who voted, would also entail a form of voter suppression as well, ruinous towards free speech and expression on debate.org . The last point you made was that, "this system would make it easier for members to recognize who is running multiple accounts in order to vote multiple times in a debate."(5) Is it really our task to determine who is running multiple accounts in order to vote multiple times on a debate? The IP address collecting service used by debate.org (6) is a more objective way of determining the identity of a particular user. The fact that debate.org knows, "the webpage from which you came"(6), can ensure that someone is not logging out of an account and logging into another account. Secondly, what would happen to a accused multiple account? It would get attacked by whatever member was conducting the multiple account search. In short, revealing the accounts of the users would achieve very little, except enable people to conduct a retaliation, which would constitute voter suppression. While an interesting concept that does have its merits, the disadvantages would outweigh the advantages. P.S. By the way, I voted for you against stevster's "argument." You deserved to have won that debate, and I'm sure that over time, you will win the debate. P.P.S. Could any of you guys help me out here for constructive criticism and feedback? I would really appreciate it! Sources: (1)http://www.debate.org... (2)http://www.debate.org... (3)http://www.un.org... (4)http://www.debate.org... (5)http://www.debate.org... (6)http://www.debate.org...