Instigator / Pro
4
1890
rating
98
debates
93.37%
won
Topic
#3450

Which were worse, the BLM protests/riots or the January 6th capitol protests/riots? [@Oromagi]

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
0
3
Better sources
2
2
Better legibility
1
1
Better conduct
1
1

After 1 vote and with 3 points ahead, the winner is...

oromagi
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
7
1922
rating
117
debates
97.44%
won
Description

Resolution Which were worse the BLM protests/riots or the January 6th capital protests/riots?

PRO = BLM protests/riots were worse
CON = Jan 6 protests/riots were worse

BLM protests/riots: The George Floyd protests were a series of protests and civil unrest against police brutality and racism that began in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 26, 2020, and largely took place during 2020.[7][8] The civil unrest and protests began as part of international reactions to the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man who was murdered during an arrest after Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis Police Department officer, knelt on Floyd's neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds[9] as three other officers looked on and prevented passers-by from intervening.

Jan 6th protests/riots: On January 6, 2021, a mob of 2,000–2,500 supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump attacked the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.[a][28][29] They sought to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election[30] by disrupting the joint session of Congress assembled to count electoral votes that would formalize President-elect Joe Biden's victory.[3][31]

BOP is shared.
Both sides must justify their respective positions of the resolution. The debate shall be judged on who is best able to show that one event was worse than another.

Additional rules:
Only Oromagi may accept.

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@oromagi

Grasping for straws with that exaggerative sophomoric retort.

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@TWS1405

Wow so...hundreds of cops and lawyers and doctors and nurses and other professionals are all so afraid of black people that they'll fuck over their own professional standards to a man. Doesn't sound the least little bit like most of the cops and lawyers and doctors and nurses I've ever met. Sounds like projection to me.

Wow so...hundreds of cops and lawyers and doctors and nurses and other professionals are all so afraid of black people that they'll fuck over their own professional standards to a man. Doesn't sound the least little bit like most of the cops and lawyers and doctors and nurses I've ever met. Sounds like projection to me.

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@oromagi

You clearly do not understand let alone appreciate the dangers inherent in this case for all involved if they ruled contrary to mob opinion/rule.

It is the same danger inherent in the OJ case should the jury have found him guilty.

So yea, they lied. Witnesses do not provide evidence as it is purely subjective opinion.

Chauvin could be agreeing to do as he is for reasons that others whose family members are threatened do so just the same.

JFC, talk about tunnel vision.

It is far too easy to trigger the violent aggressions of millions of blacks, as the riots have shown, and continue to show anytime a black criminal is shot; if it were proven the criminal was in fact at fault and the officer did nothing wrong, they (blacks) would go into full fledge riot mode yet again but on a grander scale if Chauvin was found innocent due to Floyd's obvious death due to an overdose.

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@TWS1405

And all the coroners and paramedics and Minneapolis Police and State Police and DAs and ER doctors and nurses and eyewitnesses are all just making it up because they always put strangers before their colleagues in the police. If Chauvin was innocent why did he lie to his commander about kneeling on Floyd's neck and kept it out of his report until the video went viral? As soon as the video came out, the Chief of Police fired those four cops on the spot- no Internal Affairs investigation needed, no toxicology report needed, no concerns about Union lawsuits down the road. One view of that video was enough to tell the Chief that Chauvin could never be a policeman again. If Chauvin didn't think he did the wrong thing, why the cover up? And why would Chauvin now plead guilty to callous disregard and excessive force resulting in Floyd's death? Hundreds of people need to be secretly conspiring together against a colleague and in favor of stranger to make what you claim true.

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@Barney

"@TWS1405
You’re engaging in confirmation bias."

>> No, I am not.

"As a former medical professional, I can say with certainty that not snapping the neck or otherwise leaving obvious direct signs of trauma to it, doesn’t mean the airway was not impeded.

Granted, someone more healthy likely would have survived. There’s an eggshell principle which applies to crimes."

>> As a former medical professional, then you should know what the signs, symptoms and end results of a fatal overdose of fentanyl (compounded by meth and other illicit drugs) are; all of which Floyd presented shortly after ingesting the drugs as the police walked upon the vehicle he was in.

His airway, or ability to breath, was impeded by the lethal dose if fentanyl. Period.

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@TWS1405

You’re engaging in confirmation bias.

As a former medical professional, I can say with certainty that not snapping the neck or otherwise leaving obvious direct signs of trauma to it, doesn’t mean the airway was not impeded.

Granted, someone more healthy likely would have survived. There’s an eggshell principle which applies to crimes.

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@RationalMadman

What part of what I said about the coroner report showing "NO TRAUMA" to the neck did you fail to comprehend?
Your subjective opinion is not medical evidence. It is not factual evidence. It is nothing but pure conjecture.
Mr. Feline, you are NOT living in the "real world" where this case is concerned.

Floyd died of a lethal dose of fentanyl + meth drug overdose. Period. Medical Fact. Period.

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@TWS1405

ignorance is ignoring seeing Chauvin literally lift his knee-leg boot off the ground to enable him to totally and utterly slam shut the windpipe. You can live in your fantasy world where a man with a consistently racist history even as a nightclub security worker let alone cop with many complaints against him is a poor little victim.

I prefer living in the real world.

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@RationalMadman

I respectfully disagree. NO ONE, and I mean, NO ONE knows exactly how much pressure was applied to the base of Floyd's neck but Chauvin. The only other person who would have any inclination would be the coroner. And as I have previously stated, he found absolutely no trauma indicative of a knee pressed with significant pressure to the base of the neck (atop but between the shoulder blades) of Floyd. Videos do not show either of those two things. So watch all the footage you want, you will still be utterly ignorant of what physiologically happened to Floyd. Only Chauvin and the coroner can answer that, and one of the two has spoken. The knee did not kill him. The toxicology report has spoken. The lethal dose of fentanyl killed Floyd.

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@TWS1405

I have seen enough footage and know enough about the science to know that Floyd was murdered by Chauvin. I agree his drug usage was a catalyst but Chauvin's position on Floyd's neck was the direct irrefutable cause.

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@Novice_II

The voter is a right wing Libertarian.

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@TWS1405

Oh for sure, and the majority opinion was that I won the debate. Unfortunately, the sole voter was some far leftist who came in last minute to rob me.

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@Novice_II

Dude, you should have won this debate hands down.
Oromagi made so many red herring, genetic fallacies, strawmans and false equivalence fallacies it was just pathetic.
No reasonable person could ever think 1/6 was worse than the 2020 summer riots that killed so many and caused billions in damages across the nation.
And FFS, George Floyd was not murdered by Chauvin. Floyd killed himself. I do not care what the bought and paid for medical testimony says. The toxicology report said it all where the level of meth and fentanyl is concerned. The audio on the body cam of the initial responding officer approaching Floyd's car made it clear Floyd was already complaining of respiratory issues that only got worse during the entirety of the procedural arrest he kept resisting. The autopsy also showed no significant trauma to his neck from the knee hold either. People who actually believe Floyd died from that knee vs the fatal overdose of fentanyl are purely delusional and in denial, IMHO

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@rbelivb

Thanks for voting!

"That's where I'd have to go back through the sources because I think both sides in this debate aren't very clear about how much damage that would equate to from the overall numbers that Novice_II was giving me"

In truth, there is no good breakdown. The problem with BLM label is that BLM started out as a hashtag, then became a slogan, then became a rallying cry. Black Lives Matter itself doesn't spend much time organizing so what qualifies as a BLM activity. There's no doubt that some rioters shouted that slogan but does that make them a member of BLM? Not really. Ultimately, I think the primary utility of blaming Black Lives Matter is that the first word is "black."

I, for one, did some personal reconnaissance during the riots in Denver in the first couple of weeks after George Floyd's murder. My personal experience was very much in alignment with ACLED, FBI reports.

*The people wearing BLM T-Shirts and carrying BLM signs deliberately went around protests sites in the hour before curfew telling people to go home and remain peaceful. Of all the different organization present at protests and riots, BLM was the most vocal proponent for peace- far more peaceful than the police.

*The rioters in Denver were almost exclusive white men under 30 years of age. There were some spray-painting BLM or "don't shoot' slogans but by far the most popular slogans getting spray-painted were anarchist or white supremacist in nature. There were more swastikas than BLMs, certainly.

*On the worst night of rioting, a mob of 3-400 charged up Colfax Ave, spray-painting and breaking windows. When they got to the main downtown police station, they left it alone and instead looted the liquor superstore directly across the street and then dispersed to drink. This then was NOT an anti-police protest, it was strictly opportunists looking for easy loot with little chance of consequence.

*The only significant fire was City Grille. It was right across from the Capitol and for weeks everybody assumed that rioters did it but it turned out it was homeless guy who held a grudge against the restaurant and used the riots as cover for his arson.

*The most significant assault on police came from a Trump voter whose car got tear-gassed and he was so angry he drove his car into a crowd of police at 90 mph.

*The rioters broke windows, covered buildings with graffiti and tore down the Civil War memorial (but not the Vietnam War memorial), doing more than a $1 million in property damage. By comparison, Denver Police has paid more than $14 million in damages so far to protesters who were lawfully upholding their First Amendment rights. This comports with my observations that the Denver Police were the most violent, least rational actors during the George Floyd protests, followed by white supremacists. There was one instance of a security guard for 9 News reporters who shot a White Supremacist biker gang member live on TV after continuous assaults on reporters with bear spray. There was so much violence by the biker gang caught on video that eventually all charges were dropped for the shooting.

*In my direct experience, calling that violence BLM violence is not just unfair, it is the polar opposite of the truth.

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@oromagi

Part of the problem from where I'm sitting is that I have a hard time seeing this as "worse in every single way" when the topic just said "worse." I agree that it's subjective and that there was room to argue that any measure of "worse" or "better" could work, but there was a good deal of discussion over what would subjectively be the scale that would matter most when it comes to evaluating which was worse. From what I could see, there was a certain level of agreement that the physical harms Novice_II focused on would be the most significant in pushing things towards the "worse" side. After that, the question from where I'm sitting is: was there a big enough difference in those harms to justify voting for one side? I think you're right that Novice_II attributed too many of the harms to the BLM protesters, but I noted at least a couple of instances in the debate where you granted that some BLM protesters did cause some amount of physical harm. That's where I'd have to go back through the sources because I think both sides in this debate aren't very clear about how much damage that would equate to from the overall numbers that Novice_II was giving me. In that sense, yes, I think it was rather close. Your case was largely built on me being so uncertain that I just throw out this weighing system entirely, but I didn't get the impression that it was impossible to tease apart harms caused directly by BLM protesters and those caused by other individuals during the riots.

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@Novice_II

"this guy isn't a good debater in my opinion."

Let's agree that I am not a good debater. I have no education or experience in debating and have been schooled by my betters on many occasions.

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@whiteflame

"Here are my thoughts guys. Would've been nice if more people had voted on this debate, but here we are."

Thanks for taking the trouble to record your thoughts. Frankly I'm surprised anybody thought this was close. Making a debate where the thing you have to prove is only WORSE or BETTER without any standard for comparison essentially makes a debate subjective. If doing harm in the name of lies and bringing down America seems worse than just another summer race riot (and not even a top ten one of those) the PRO should lose every time. PRO's only argument was that all of the harms from all the protests of 2020 exceeded all of the harms done on Jan 6th but he deceptively, insistently needed to blame BLM. PRO blames 19 murders on BLM and then can't document a single instance where a BLM protester killed someone. One murder in August might be fairly attributed to a BLM protester but we were limited to the first two weeks. BY any objective measure, police killed and injured far more people than BLM did. Why not call them the Police protests/riots rather than the BLM protests/riots? Likewise, he failed to put a single BLM protester at the scene of any damage. The whole debate was ultimately one long dropped question: Why blame all (or even much) of the harm on BLM?

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@RationalMadman

It's against the rules to conspire with other voters. It's not against the rules, as far as I can tell, for someone to decide that they will only post their vote under certain conditions, even conditions of "the side I'm voting for is currently losing." What we're talking about here is just intent, but again, I don't know of any rule on this site that disallows this behavior. The rules are posted publicly, so feel free to prove me wrong.

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@whiteflame

strategic voting is against the rules.

It is exactly correct that the only acceptable way to strategically vote is to keep your mouth shut, there should be severe penalties when you literally admit that you'd have someone's back if the votes went the other way but wouldn't vote otherwise.

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@RationalMadman

Not sure why you feel that. It’s strategic voting, but it strikes me that it isn’t particularly problematic. If it is something we should actively work against, then really all we could do is stop people from posting their intentions. People could still vote strategically and just not say anything about why they timed their vote the way they did.

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@whiteflame

no, that is not how it should work.

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@RationalMadman

Someone can choose to withhold their vote from a debate because they see that the side that they would be voting for is winning anyway. That's not against the rules. That same someone can then choose to add their vote to the debate if the votes begin favoring the other side. In a manner of speaking, that is an effort to "stop someone losing" the debate by adding your vote at a time that you feel those points will matter most. I don't see why either of those choices are against the rules, but if you happen to know of a rule on the site that says otherwise, please reference it.

If you're referring to something else entirely, please clarify.

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@whiteflame

It is 100% against the rules to vote based on stopping someone losing that you don't want to lose that you'd otherwise withhold voting for. That should not be one's reasoning ever.

I agree that it's a shame mine was the only vote, and I do think that Novice made some good points and put effort into the debate. However, if we start trying to delete every vote we disagree with, then that will only discourage voting even more. Ultimately, I found that the two events being compared in the debate weren't really comparable, and neither side really managed to bridge that gap properly. But PRO's use of empirical statistics for the most part completely neglected that problem, by ignoring the qualitative differences between the two events.

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@Bones

I appreciate you saying that because this vote is just incoherent and poorly constructed.

rbelivb's vote should be tossed and of the charts, Novice seems to be more convincing. I wouldn't have voted though, cross checking all the seemingly contradictory sources provided by PRO and CON and ensuring that correlation was actually causation would have taken too much time.

It's just unfortunate to me I suppose. Regardless this guy isn't a good debater in my opinion. Records are misleading and frankly, anyone can win a debate with an equitable resolution. Some of the people ascribed with this perception are simply just bad faith individuals who hardly ever have genuine challenges.

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@TheMorningsStar

Well, i'm not blaming you or anything, I do understand people have things to do and that's fine, I am just frustrated with the results here because I think it's obvious that I am the rightful winner here.

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@Novice_II

I do apologize for not having cast a vote though. Having seen others expressing they would vote made me feel as if my time as best spent elsewhere, but seeing the outcome I do regret not putting in that time.

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@Novice_II

It doesn’t look like FLRW was saying that he would vote against you regardless of whether he thought Oro won. It looks like he was planning to vote if it looked like votes were swinging against Oro. Maybe I’m interpreting it wrong, but that’s how I read it. If you are correct, then I very much doubt that FLRW would have produced a vote that met the voting standards if he had already decided the outcome without considering Oro’s arguments.

I’ve already given my thoughts on the debate itself, so I’ll abstain from restating to those in response to your frustrations. That being said, I do think this debate deserved more votes.

Well, what can I say? Everyone knows I won this debate. I was robbed by some far left ideologue who clearly made a ridiculous RFD and did not understand the arguments made. The issue with this site isn't debates, it's the voters.

Here is a quote from someone who voted bombed for oromagi previously saying he still would have voted for him even if it was obvious he was losing.
> "I would have voted for oromagi if it looked like he was losing." (FLRW).
Do you think it's not a genuine issue to have someone openly admit he would vote against an individual even if he thought they won, for apparently no reason at all?

Do you know how annoying and it is to have challenged the" top ranked" debater on the platform, clearly and evidently defeated him argumentatively, and still "loose" the debate on record?

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@RationalMadman

I agree, I think Pro should have won. The reason I did not vote is because when reading I realized that it was difficult for me to come at both sides argument from an unbiased perspective. Of course, I could put in the extra effort to do so, but I really didn't feel like putting in that much time in voting when there is no expectation for me to do so. I also did decide to hold off a bit because I saw others say they would cast a vote and figured that having multiple votes would be good enough (though, sadly, not everyone went through with voting for one reason or another).

Novice won this debate in my judgement and would have gotten my vote if both asked me to vote.

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@whiteflame

I considered voting on it, but I never had the time to write an RFD. Not sure which way I would have gone.

I would have voted for oromagi if it looked like he was losing.

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@oromagi
@Novice_II

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1evCuI6WmgTX0HzShaCNmhBzmmDTM3_QsBTwDMF85t_c/edit?usp=sharing

Here are my thoughts guys. Would've been nice if more people had voted on this debate, but here we are.

I'm re-thinking voting on this one. I'll give one of my reasons for it later (I'll post an RFD because I've got thoughts), but the other is that it's looking like we're likely to have a couple of votes coming in just in time and I can't both moderate the debate and vote on it. Like I said, I'll give thoughts anyway after the voting period ends.

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@oromagi
@rbelivb
@Novice_II

**************************************************
>Reported Vote: rbelivb // Mod action: Removed
>Voting Policy: info.debateart.com/terms-of-service/voting-policy
>Points Awarded: 6 points to Con
>Reason for Decision: See Votes Tab.
>Reason for Mod Action:
Though the voter goes into great detail on why they awarded arguments, the RFD does not include details on why they awarded conduct and sources. Even including the recent comment as an addition, the voter insufficiently explains both point allocations. Sources require specific evaluation of what makes one side more or less effective, and conduct requires more than just one side being more aggressive with regards to seeking point awards.
https://info.debateart.com/terms-of-service/voting-policy#concessions
**************************************************

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@rbelivb

RFD text:

PRO began their argument with the ridiculous claim that the BLM protests "created some of the most tragic and devastating periods of violence in American history" - but went on to nevertheless provide some quite convincing numbers. CON responded by pointing out that much of the violence cited by PRO was due to "opportunistic acts of violence and vandalism by people with no particular political motive." We could infer, however, that the intensity and chaos of the BLM protests were what created the opening for such opportunists. However, CON also later points out the role of right wing extremists and opportunists in escalating and contributing to the violence.
CON attempted to put the entire burden of proof on PRO, even though the description stipulated shared BOP, stating that "As the instigator of this debate, PRO bears the entire burden of proof for this debate." I don't think this makes sense, since both sides of this debate involve a positive claim (that one side was worse than the other).
CON pointed out that the claims motivating Stop the Steal were blatantly false, while the motivations of BLM are admirable and true. This is a convincing point, since a mere accounting of dollars in damage, or people harmed, does not give the sense of the historical role of a movement. CON also pointed out that the BLM protests were the "single greatest political protest in US history" - which presumably accounts at least partially for the different scale of violence and destruction.
Both sides deployed certain "fixed ideas" in the course of their arguments. PRO had a clear pro-police and anti-crime stance, while CON made reference to the constitution and democracy.
Then there was PRO's attempt to take away conduct points from CON for providing sources in the comments. This came across as quite petty, especially since the links seem to be just reposting the same sources that were hyperlinked in the text of the argument.
The discussion around much of the violence and death seems to come down to the chaotic nature and massive energy and scale of the BLM protests. I do not totally buy CON's attempt to separate the good from the bad actors, since to an extent the scale and furious atmosphere of the protests led to a level of disorder in which violence may have been inevitable. The CON case would need to be that the inflammatory climate created by the protests was a necessary collateral damage in the greater cause being advocated for. In this respect, CON was quite convincing in making the comparison to the Iraq War and World War II.
CON points out that PRO used a "questionable and far-Right" source, which in my view takes further points from PRO's conduct and sources. PRO attempts to call this the "genetic fallacy" which I view as an absurd misuse of that fallacy.
This was a very difficult debate to judge impartially. CON argued largely in terms of the intentions of the protesters, but did not do much to show that the actual outcomes of such a large scale protest justified the amount of unrest it caused. PRO made a convincing case about the violence and destruction that occurred in the course of the protests, but ignored the differences in scale, as well as failing entirely to address the intentions or worldview behind the protests. Therefore, one's opinion about which perspective was more convincing probably largely depends on their view of the intentions of BLM, as well as their opinion about the overall efficacy of such large-scale protests. I would suggest that the resolution should have been more specific, since I think this one is so broad that anyone's decision about "who won" will largely come down to their preexisting opinions.
It was a good debate in which each side put in an admirable amount of effort. However, Pro took an altogether empirical approach which ignored the importance of history and philosophy, while Con's approach was much more philosophical and relied at times upon the abstractions of liberalism while neglecting concrete outcomes. In the end, my personal feeling was that Con's opinion was more convincing.

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@Undefeatable

This was due mostly to pro's justification of using biased sources using the "genetic fallacy," and attempting to ask voters to take conduct points away from con for posting in the comments.

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@rbelivb

While your vote makes sense argument wise, I don’t see why the conduct and sources portion is justified for cons side…

I'll try to blitz through this and get a vote up by tomorrow.

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@RationalMadman

I'll vote on it don't worry. I think I know who won as well, I haven't completed my impact analysis though.

Less than 24 hours left. I guess I will be the deciding vot

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@oromagi
@Novice_II

do you both want me to vote?

Two days left.

I will avoid voting to avoid beef.

I know who I believe won. I will keep it to myself.