Can Policy Debates End in a Tie?
We love Costs. One of the many things we love about them: they remind the judge that failure is worse than doing nothing.
Plan: Turn on the air conditioner.
Advantage: Cool Room. We’ll be more comfortable in here.
Advantage Response: Vent Clogged. There’s something in the ducts that’s blocking all air from coming into this room, so turning on the AC won’t cool us down.
Cost: Wasted Electricity. Running the AC will cost you money and damage the environment.
If you just run the advantage response, the impact calculus goes like this:
cool room - cool room = 0
That’s a perfect tie, which suggests that both actions are exactly even. The cost tips the scale and pushes the calculus into negative territory. Of course, even a novice team could be expected to run that Cost.
Is it possible that two skilled teams could have a full policy debate, and when the smoke cleared, you’d have a perfect impact tie of 0?
Presumption
Presumption is often incorrectly invoked to tell the judge to vote negative if the impact calculus is close. That’s not what presumption means. Presumption doesn’t tell us anything about the impact calculus; they’re two completely distinct metrics. If the affirmative upheld their Burden of Proof, the judge must leave presumption behind and focus on the impacts.
Apples & Oranges
Many policy debates force the judge to choose between two things that are hard to measure directly - like economic growth vs environmental protection. If both sides are running arguments in different offensive areas, it’ll be hard to claim a perfect tie.
A baby and a briefcase with a million dollars are about to fall into a volcano. You can only save one. Resolved: Save the baby.
Whatever arguments either side runs, the impact calculus probably won’t end at 0.
For this reason, perfect ties are astronomically unlikely unless the the negative runs a counterplan, or the status quo is very similar to the Plan. The costs will almost always be very different from the advantages and harms.
Values
Debates might also force the judge between two outcomes that are similar but distinct. In that scenario, you’d have to assign worth to your thing to convince the judge that it’s better. In other words, you’d have a mini value debate inside the policy debate.
The two people you texted last are falling into a volcano …
Whichever person the judge saves, the impact calculus looks like this:
1 life saved - 1 life lost = 0 net lives
But that doesn’t mean that those two people are interchangeable. The debaters will probably come up with lots of other ways to evaluate the worth of a life. For example, if one of the people the judge just texted is a brilliant medical scientist, they might say that that person can bring more good into the world if they live.
Even a small amount of that kind of thinking will make perfect zero impossible.
Truly Indistinguishable Outcomes
To create a perfect tie, you’d need this recipe.
Affirmative runs a plan that either has a lot of uncertainty, or perfectly defined outcome.
Negative option has the exact same uncertainty or outcome.
Like this:
One of these goblets was poisoned before we entered the room. The judge must drink one. Resolved: drink the goblet on the right.
Affirmative: Drink the goblet on the right. It gives you a 50% chance of survival.
Negative: No, you should drink the goblet on the left, which gives you a 50% chance of survival.
Remember, presumption doesn’t help here! In this scenario, the impact calculus is perfect:
50% chance of survival - 50% chance of death = 0
That means perfect ties are theoretically possible in policy debate. Of course, they’re incredibly unlikely in live rounds - especially if you run Costs well.
Up next: why the Team Policy format is broken. Stay tuned!