NSDA LD Topic Analysis: Compulsory Voting
Debate season is upon us! DFW Speech and Debate will be releasing topic analyses, sample cases and files for each NSDA LD resolution this year. A sample for the resolutional analysis is below, along with a free download of the full analysis and sample cases! Files will be available to purchase from our store for $15/file or $60/yearlong subscription. Our files are written by Coach Ian Mikkelsen and the 2020 NSDA LD Champion Jo Spurgeon.
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“The 2020-21 NSDA Lincoln Douglas debate season begins with a familiar debate topic — Resolved: In a democracy, voting ought to be compulsory. Those who have gone through past NSDA LD resolutions will recognize this as the same topic as the one for September/October 2013-2014. However, the real-world context is radically different.
Whereas the 2013-2014 topic came in the wake of a successful re-election campaign by former President Obama and in the midst of a slow but continuing economic recovery, the 2020-21 topic faces a world where a global pandemic continues in multiple countries (most notable for this topic being Brazil where compulsory voting is already the law and the United States which will undoubtedly color some judges decisions), an economy which has seen a GDP drop of 32.9% in the past quarter, and with a President which has questioned the validity of the upcoming election due to mail-in ballots (Gutiérrez & Clarke, 2020; Kliesen, 2016; Parks, 2020; Tappe, 2020). This is to say nothing of voter access and suppression that have become, if anything, more political in the past decade with both major political parties staking out what they believe may be the most beneficial electoral position.
Due to this, while this topic can be heavily philosophical and/or theoretical, debaters will be hard pressed to wave away the more salient political examples that judges may already be familiar with. Much of the topic literature is rooted in an article from Lijphart’s 1997 speech “Unequal participation: Democracy’s unresolved dilemma presidential address” which specifically cites issues of economic distribution and inequality, further framing the debate into a context that is all too familiar for those who have been following the 2020 electoral process. Theoretical considerations from the past century can certainly be reused, but it will be necessary for debaters who are looking for the best strategies to look to literature which has been produced in the past few years. If they fail to do so, they risk depending on information which is based in a fundamentally different world.”
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Want more? Download the full topic analysis and sample cases or purchase the file/season subscription below.