• The Help America Vote Act has improved the voting process..
• Electronic voting machines have improved accessiblity to the polls..
• American standards of voting should be changed to meet the standards as set by the Carter Center's Democratic Election Standards
  

Two good descriptions of how a debate works can be found on the web The first by James Tomlinson describes the format of the classic Lincoln-Douglas debates. The second prepared by Education World gives some strategies for debaters to use to increase their persuasiveness.

Because the time we have is limited to 24 minutes per debate, we will use the following format adapted from the Education World site.

• Teams will be composed of approximately 5 students.
• The format will be
  1. (5 minutes) Affirmative position debater presents constructive debate points.
  2. (2 minutes) Negative position debater cross-examines affirmative points.
  3. (5 minutes) Negative position presents constructive debate points.
  4. (2 minutes) Affirmative position cross-examines negative points.
  5. (3 minutes) Affirmative position offers first rebuttal
  6. (5 minutes) Negative position offers first rebuttal
  7. (2 minutes) Affirmative position offers second rebuttal
  8. (24 minutes) total
• Note that one team (the Affirmative) gets to talk 4 times, and the other (The Negative) gets to talk 3 times. Each team gets equal amount of time. A different team member will talk each time.
• Jason will be the moderator.
• Tim will be the judge.

It is best if each team studies the different startegies on the Education World page, and chooses 1 or two as their debate preparation strategy.

When

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