Resolved: In the US, plea bargaining ought to be abolished
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 6 votes and with 14 points ahead, the winner is...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 4
- Time for argument
- Three days
- Max argument characters
- 30,000
- Voting period
- Two weeks
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
Round Structure. I will cede the first round so that Pro can go first.
I will offer my constructive, and then we will alternate between Pro and Con until the final round, in which Pro is required to waive.
Other than that, standard rules apply.
In other words, don't post new args in the final round. Don't be a di**.
That's about it.
Plea Bargaining - an arrangement between a prosecutor and a defendant whereby the defendant pleads guilty to a lesser charge in the expectation of leniency.
Ought - used to indicate duty or correctness, typically when criticizing someone's actions.
Abolished - formally put an end to (a system, practice, or institution).
Framework
Major policy debates such as this should be evaluated on the framework of consequentialism, the framework where we judge the an actions of a proposed rule by evaluating the impacts they have on the people.
Value Premise: Justice
What is justice? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines justice as “the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments.” In order for there to be true justice, several things must be true: (1) the defendant was his full constitutional and legal rights; and (2) the punishment must be in direct proportion to the crime that was committed. If a person committed mass murder, I’m sure my opponent would agree that a 1 year prison sentence would not be just. I’m sure that my opponent would also agree then a 50 year sentence for petty shoplifting would be disproportionate (assuming that this was the accused’s first offense). With that in mind, let’s get to my plan.
The Plan
Plea bargaining will be banned and prosecutors will no longer have the ability to coerce a defendant to plea guilty by enticing them with a more lenient sentence. However, the accused party will still have the right to plea guilty, but will no longer have any incentive to do so.
C1: Plea bargaining prevents justice
One of the criteria that I established in evaluating justice is the doctrine of proportionality, that the sentence should be in direct proportion to the crime that the party committed. When a defendant encouraged by the state to plea guilty and get a reward, two things happen, (1) the doctrine of proportionality is compromised; and (2) miscarriage of justice is often inevitable. Let’s begin by going more in-depth.
A. The innocent
Defendants are in a very vulnerable situation and will often plea guilty even though they are completely innocent. Those who cannot afford bail and do not want to wait 6 months for the trial will almost certainly plea guilty just to get it over with. According to the innocent project at least 31 people plead guilty to serious crimes like rape and murder to avoid long sentences and to avoid trial. These innocent people served a combined total of 150 years in prison [1]. In the case of Robby Ray Dixon they pled guilty to a 1979 Mississippi rape and murder they didn’t commit. After the two men were threatened with the death penalty, they testified against a third innocent defendant (ibid).
The innocent project further breaks down some alarming statistics: 95% of felon convections are convicted through plea bargaining, 18% of those exonerated plead guilty, and 83% of DNA tests pointed to a different perpetrator (2).
If innocent people are forced to plea guilty to serious crimes they didn't commit, how many more are convicted on petty crimes and misdemeanors? That number really cant be known, but it's quite a scary probability.
B. The Guilty
For those who truly are guilty, bargaining is to their benefit by avoiding trial and getting a super lenient sentences or some serious charges simply dropped. The Human Rights Watch founded the following statistics [2]:
- Defendants convicted of drug offenses with mandatory minimum sentences who went to trial received sentences on average 11 years longer than those who pled guilty (215 versus 82.5 months).
- Among first-time drug defendants facing mandatory minimum sentences who had the same offense level and no weapon involved in their offense, those who went to trial had almost twice the sentence length of those who pled guilty (117.6 months versus 59.5 months).
- Among defendants who were eligible for a sentencing enhancement because of prior convictions, those who went to trial were 8.4 times more likely to have the enhancement applied than those who plead guilty.
- Among drug defendants with a weapon involved in their offense, those who went to trial were 2.5 times more likely to receive consecutive sentences for §924(c) charges than those who pled guilty.
Thus in summary, plea bargains significantly undermine the integrity of the justice system, as Dr. Kaiser noted [3]:
Plea bargaining undermines the integrity of the criminal justice system. Instead of establishing a defendant’s guilt and sentence though an impartial process with a complete investigation and an opportunity for the defence to present its case, prosecutors take on the role of judge and jury, making all determinations based on the probability of whether they will win or lose at trial. The end result is a decision that has little to do with the primary objectives of the criminal justice system.
C2: Plea bargains are unnecessary
Among those who argue that abolishing plea bargains would clog up the courts, research has found the exact opposite. According to my plan, guilty pleas would still be permitted. When Alaska abolished plea bargaining, the National Institute of Justice found that “guilty pleas continued to flow in at nearly undiminished rates. Most defendants pled guilty even when the state offered them nothing in exchange for their cooperations.” [4]
Conclusion
Plea bargaining is an unnecessary perversion of justice. By encouraging innocent people to plea guilty and letting guilty people off the hook, plea bargains pervert justice. Therefore, plea bargains ought to be abolished.
Sources
1. https://www.innocenceproject.org/when-the-innocent-plead-guilty/
2. https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/12/05/offer-you-cant-refuse/how-us-federal-prosecutors-force-drug-defendants-plead?mod=article_inline
3. https://dailytimes.com.pk/37291/the-unnecessary-evil-of-plea-bargaining/
4. https://ejusa.org/learn/plea-bargains/
2. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/innocence-is-irrelevant/534171/
3. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/income.html
8.https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/criminal_justice_magazine/sp12_ethics.authcheckdam.pdf
11.https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/public-defenders-gideon-supreme-court-charts/
15. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2017-07-26/understaffed-and-overcrowded-state-prisons-crippled-by-budget-constraints-bad-leadership
16. https://publicpolicy.wharton.upenn.edu/live/news/1736-the-current-state-of-public-and-private-prison#_edn7
Re C1/C3: Increased reliance on public defense / Court Clog
Both of these arguments are interrelated and my rebuttals are interrelated so I will address them both at the same time. First, Con makes a significant error in assuming that all cases will go to trial. Recall that my plan allows for guilty pleas but would abolish the bargaining process in which a defended is coerced in pleading guilty. Second, we need to look at the cause of a huge work load and court clog. Plea bargains enable the mass incarceration and the massive workload on the court system. By abolishing plea bargaining, we would actually force the government to make much needed reforms. Danny Weil notes [1]:
As long as plea bargains are used as a club to coerce defendants into abdicating their right of the constitutional guarantee to a fair trial, the prison-industrial complex will continue to grow exponentially. Plea bargains are one big woodpile that serves to fuel the ever-expanding prison-industrial complex, rendering transparent the American political resolve to incarcerate more and more people even if it means bankrupting their municipalities, cutting education and devoting their budgets to subsidizing the for-profit prison industry. If this resolve represents the mens rea (criminal intent) of the political will for mass incarceration, then plea bargaining can be said to represent the actus reus, the physical act of carrying out the industrial carceral state. If plea bargains were eliminated, or even severely monitored and reduced, the states and the federal government would then be required to carry out their burden under the constitution of proving the guilt of a criminal defendant in accordance with the law. If this happened, there would be a whopping reduction in prosecutions, not to mention incarcerations. Such a shift would be an important step in ending the current carceral culture of mass confinement and cruelty. Michelle Alexander, a civil rights lawyer and bestselling author of the book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, recently wrote in The New York Times that in her phone call with Susan Burton, a formerly incarcerated woman who took a plea bargain for drug use, Burton asked: What would happen if we organized thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people charged with crimes to refuse to play the game, to refuse to plea out? What if they all insisted on their Sixth Amendment right to trial? Couldn't we bring the whole system to a halt just like that? Believe me, I know. I'm asking what we can do. Can we crash the system just by exercising our rights? Burton has the right to ask this question. It took her 15 years after pleading to a drug charge to get her life back together. The organization she recently started, A New Way of Life, offers a much-needed lifeline to women released from prison. But it does much more than this: it is also helping to start a movement against plea bargaining and the restoration of the constitution as it applies to citizens. All of Us or None is another such group that is organizing formerly incarcerated people and encouraging them to demand restoration of their basic civil and human rights. But the question Burton asks remains: could criminal defendants really crash the system if they demanded their constitutional rights and refused to plea to crimes they did not commit? From the point of view of American University law professor Angela J. Davis, the answer is yes. The system of mass industrial incarceration is entirely dependent on the cooperation of those it seeks to control. If everyone charged with crimes suddenly exercised their constitutional rights, then there would not be enough judges, lawyers or prison cells to deal with the flood tide of litigation. As Davis notes, not everyone would have to join for the revolt to have an impact: "if the number of people exercising their trial rights suddenly doubled or tripled in some jurisdictions, it would create chaos." The entire carceral system is riddled with corruption and broken beyond comprehension. Davis and Burton might be right: crashing the judicial system by refusing to get roughhoused into phony plea bargain deals could be the most responsible route to cleaning up the courts and restoring constitutional rights. It is daunting, and it takes guts, but with more than 90 percent incarcerated for plea bargains, it is courage we need. One thing we do know: there are many people falsely accused of crimes doing time in for-profit American gulags, and many more waiting to replace them. This situation might be good for the for-profit prison system and a few major stockholders but it spells Dante's Inferno for those forced to take the plea, as Alford, Banks, Burton and far too many others know.
The plea bargain regime is at odds with traditional notions of fairness, justice, and truth.24 Unlike trials which are public, involve legal community outsiders, and have expansive constitutional substantive and procedural protections-plea-bargaining "take[s] place in the shadow of the law, largely immune to judicial review, with minimal and under-enforced oversight. 25 Prosecutors have virtually unlimited discretion in determining when to dismiss a case, offer a plea, or proceed to trial. 26 When a plea deal is obtained, it rarely is the result of a meaningful two-sided negotiation. "Prosecutors have the clear and undeniable upper hand...they can overcharge, leverage overbroad laws, exploit the information imbalance, wear down the defendant with (often extended) pre-trial incarceration...", and threaten to abuse draconian sentencing guidelines. 28 The reasonableness of a plea offer is contingent on a number of factors, but ultimately, two similarly situated defendants may face vastly different penalties depending on how sympathetic or antagonistic a particular prosecutor is to a given defendant or victim.29 Thus, broad and unmonitored discretion both allows for, and inhibits detection of, the discriminatory application of criminal laws.30 In its current form, the plea bargain regime grants prosecutors the unshackled authority to perpetuate systematic inequality. 31 These injustices are further compounded when a defendant is poor ("80 percent of defendants are indigent and thus unable to hire a lawyer").32 Public defenders are commonly denied access to essential resources along with being burdened by excessive caseloads.33 As a result, many defendants are pressured into accepting a plea deal after speaking with their attorney for only a few minutes-a practice disparagingly known as "meet em' and plead em’".
The justice system is no longer set up to provide an innocent man his day in court. It is a machine for producing plea bargains in industrial quantities. It can operate no other way, because the volume of cases is far larger than the court system can actually handle. So instead of trials that take a long time and cost a lot of money but ideally separate the guilty from the innocent, we have become dependent on an assembly line where the accused go in at one end and come out the other a (relatively) short time later -- as convicted criminals, regardless of their guilt or innocence, but with shorter sentences than they would have faced if convicted at trial and with smaller lawyers’ bills than they would have faced if they had gone to trial. As this suggests, there are real benefits to the plea-bargaining system, even for the defendants. But there is a drawback as well. In 1979, law professor Malcolm Freeley published “The Process Is the Punishment,” a book in which he used the lens of the New Haven, Connecticut, court system to show the ways in which the trial itself -- as separate from any sentence imposed -- can function to punish people. This can be a problem even if the defendant turns out to be guilty, but at least we have the option of compensating for this extra-judicial punishment by reducing the formal sentence. But when the system gets out of control, it produces Kafkaesque results even for guilty defendants: How many of us think that three years behind bars is the right sentence for the theft of a backpack? And of course, when the defendant is innocent, this jail term is not merely excessive, but something close to a crime itself. This is not what the machine was designed to produce. The most obvious way to begin repairing this broken system is to spend more money building courtrooms and hiring judges, so that defendants actually do have a chance at their constitutionally guaranteed right to a speedy trial. We should also take a long, hard look at the number of things that are crimes, and the sentencing laws that require many crimes be requited with very harsh penalties. Most our mass incarceration problem is a sentencing problem, driven by both mandatory minimums and prosecutors who are rewarded for being “tough on crime.” 1 These factors aggravate the flaws of the plea-bargaining system. Prosecutors can threaten to prosecute on draconian charges, which carry draconian sentences -- and all but force a defendant, even an innocent one, to take a plea bargain, with a lesser charge and a lesser sentence. Defendants (guilty and innocent alike) usually conclude that the risk of going to trial is simply too great. And the plea bargains, in turn, keep the machine from choking on the volume of cases being run through it. Instead it grinds out a very poor substitute for justice. Reducing the number of laws and reducing the ability (or requirement) for prosecutors to secure serious jail time for so many offenses would reduce mass incarceration and start to unclog our court system.
Once again we need to look at the cause of the overcrowding and worsening prison conditions. Hint: It’s related to the above response. If drugs and victimless “crimes” were decriminalized, our jails and prisons would be less overcrowded and prosecutors and judges would be able to solve real crimes that have real impacts in the community. We ought to abolish pre-trial detention for low risk defendants who have not gone to trial and significantly reform the bail system. The Penal Reform International institute notes [4]:
Pre-trial detention undermines the chance of a fair trial and the rule of law in a number of ways. The majority of people who come into contact with criminal law know little about their rights. Many countries do not have an adequate legal aid system, and many people cannot afford to pay for a lawyer. Even when they can, it is much harder to prepare well for a trial in a prison cell.
The pre-trial stage (from arrest to trial) of the criminal justice process is also particularly prone to corruption. Unhindered by scrutiny or accountability, police, prosecutors, and judges may arrest, detain, and release individuals based on their ability to pay bribes.
Pre-trial detention has a hugely damaging impact on defendants, their families and communities. Even if a person is acquitted and released, they may still have lost their home and job. They face the stigma of having been in prison when they return to the community.
Because of its severe and often irreversible negative effects, international law states that pre-trial detention should be the exception rather than the rule and that if there is a risk, for example, of a person absconding, then the least intrusive measures possible should be applied. A range of non-custodial measures are available, including bail, confiscation of travel documents, reporting to police or other authorities, and submitting to electronic monitoring or curfews.
Conclusion
Applying the framework of consequentialism, my case got a lot stronger. Con highlighted some significant flaws within the justice system. If we abolish plea bargaining, the government would be forced to make significant reforms that would fix the issues that Con brought up and would restore our constitutional rights.
Please vote pro. Thank you.
Sources
1. https://truthout.org/articles/overwhelming-use-of-plea-bargains-plays-major-role-in-mass-incarceration/
2. https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/gjmodco8&div=18&id=&page=
3. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-26/plea-bargains-are-a-travesty-there-s-another-way
4. https://www.penalreform.org/priorities/pre-trial-justice/issue/
Framework
Both my opponent and I have agreed to the consequentialist framework. If abolishing plea bargaining has better consequences for the justice system, then you must vote pro. With that, let’s go to some voting issues
Value Criteria
My opponent fails to challenge my value and criteria. Recall that my two criteria are that the defendant must be given his full constitutional and legal rights; and that the punishment must be in proportion to the crime. Therefore, we must look at justice through the lenses of these two criteria.
Defense C1: Perversion of Justice
I have given several real life cases of innocent people who plead guilty to serious crimes to avoid the death penalty and more serious punishment, my opponent fails to even acknowledge this or respond to this; moreover, I have given several real life cases and statistics where there is a significant difference in sentencing between those who plea guilty and the ones who go to trial. Therefore we must conclude that one of those sentences is grossly disproportionate to the crime. Thus we conclude that plea bargaining perverts the criteria of justice. This point alone is enough to vote for the affirmative.
Defense C2: Bargaining is unnecessary
My opponent asks why a hypothetical defendant would plea guilty if they have no incentive to do so. The answer is obviously to get the trial over with. The evidence and examples I provided shows that defendants plea guilty even when there is no incentive to do so.
Conclusion of the debate
I strongly urge a vote for the affirmative. The evidence I have provided shows that plea bargaining perverts justice (unchallenged) and that it directly feeds the mass incarceration problem that we have.
VOTE PRO!
P.S. Who the heck reported this debate?
Both sides ask me to weigh their respective policy/status quo by the consequences.
Pro, somehow immediately starts talking about justice and setting up a debate partially on the premise of justice.
In general, the argument pro makes is fairly intuitive: people being forced to plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit is necessarily bad. For guilty people, pros position didn’t seem entirely clear in terms of how it fit into the weighting he asked for. Sure there are impacts on the guilty people, but there’s no tying back to that premise.
Con rounds out his argument here, by arguing, effectively that the criminal justice system depends on plea bargains due to amount of time spent in the court system, prison overcrowding and that the innocent would end up spending more time in prison due to relying on public defenders.
Pro could have offered a counter plan, I felt his argument that without plea bargains - prosecutors would be more selective, and that drugs crimes would be lessened in penalty necessarily.
This argument feels intuitive, while con is arguing the negative side from the point of view of individuals, pros argument makes it feel that the governments side would suffer as well, and pros second round hashes some of these out.
If this had been included within pros initial plan (and thus have the fiat), this would have been pretty reasonable but con goes basically points out that cons implication that this would necessarily happen is not guaranteed. In fact much of cons argument in round three around the evidence and justification for why pros claimed mitigation may not happen: the public support for example is excellent
At the end of this, both sides of this ask me to vote on consequences: I felt that neither side really gave me much in the way of establishing the overall consequences on balance of both side. Whilst one possible outcome from pro was better justice and potentially not crippling the CJS, the mitigation’s pro offered did not seem well enough hashed out, compared to cons issues.
Neither side felt well anchored to the way I was told to vote: injustice vs crippling the system. I wanted to go for pros intuitive arguments; but there was not enough there, and con did just enough to cast doubt on their possibility.
As a result, I have to go with the most substantial and solidified consequences.
Arguments to con.
I am a US citizen who considers plea bargaining to be legal blackmail- essentially, make our [prosecutors, judges] jobs easy or we will increase your punishment. Nevertheless, this voter finds that Pro’s case fails to persuade.
Pro’s opener is problematic.
*Waiting six months in jail for a trial is a major consequence. Few defendants who fail to make bail have a chance to retain present employment over that kind of time. This claim needed lots of stats but got none.
*31 innocents convicted of major crimes some time before 2009 is a clear and specific miscarriage of justice but that statistic by itself conveys no sense of the scope and scale of the problem. If Pro only offers 31 miscarriages of justice than perhaps the problem isn’t as bad as this reader assumed.
*When Pro does get down to stats, errors really harm the impact: 95% felony plea bargains seems true but not substantiated by any of Pro’s sources, 18% of exonerated pled guilty is also not substantiated by Pro’s sources but seems plausible (my research came up with 11%), 83% of DNA tests point to other perp (what? That can’t be true. What set of DNA tests are we talking about? Neither Pro or Pro’s sources elucidate.)
*as a voter who finds most drug sentences too onerous and nonproductive, stats that show that plea bargains reduce drug sentence is counter-persuasive.
*Pro’s defense (won’t clog courts) was minimal but fine.
Con’s opener was better.
Increased costs of public defense
Increased costs of incarceration
Clogged courts
I consider the clogged courts arguments a wash- Alaska vs. El Paso, Pro depends on Drug decriminalization which remains a fairly wild variable, Con depends on a status quo response to clogged system which seems unlikely.
This voter considers the harm of jailing innocent far more consequential than the harm of increased justice system costs. However, we have to weigh these consequences with a strong sense of scale- is a handful of unjust imprisonments worth substantially fewer costs? Pro really needed to give this voter a sense of the scale of unjust imprisonments to a degree sufficient to outweigh the costs of public defense and increased incarceration that were well established by Con and barely contested by Pro.
Arguments to Con.
All other points equal for what amounts to a grown-up contest reflective of actual policy decision-making. Nice work.
Kiss my goddamn ass.
I could go either way here.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Mwn5fqefLFhv_dlBxBhm9ET0ABqX7MhN9OTSIpXYCzI/edit?usp=sharing
I'm evaluating this premise by premise. I'll start with Pro's and then do Con's.
Pro's C's:
C1: Plea bargaining prevents justice
Pro argued that plea bargaining forced innocent's into a sentence that they did not deserve and the guilty to get lighter sentences. Con's only rebuttal is that the alternative would be public defenders entering into trials with barely any preparation for the case at all. Pro's only defense is that Con did not respond to the many statistics that he cited.
This was a very disappointing contention. Pro started it out very well, but Con barely rebutted it. Furthermore, Pro didn't even address what Con said, instead resorting to simply point out what Con didn't do.
Overall, defenders not being able to be prepared is a safe reason for them to get plea bargains for their clients, so I have to award this point to Con because Pro did not respond to it.
C2: Plea bargains are unnecessary
Pro argues that guilty pleas are still going to be used, and cites Alaska as an example. Con rebutted quite a bit by showing how plea bargains still continued in Alaska, plus the fact that Alaska barely had any felony convictions. He also gave an example of El Paso, where plea bargains were banned and courts were clogged. Pro did not even attempt to defend his source, so because of that, this point goes to Con as well.
Now I will do Con's contentions.
C1: Increased Reliance on Public Defenders
Con argues that public defenders are currently being swamped and that plea bargains help them lift the load a bit better. Pro rebuts by saying that guilty plea rates will still stay the same, so defenders won't be that swamped. Con defended by pointing back to his El Paso source which showed that the caseload doubled when plea bargains were abolished. Pro didn't respond, so this point goes to Con.
C2: Worsens Prison Conditions Due to Overcrowding
Con argues that prisons become worse because they are more crowded since there are more trials due to a lack of plea bargaining. Pro rebuts by saying that various reforms through the government would nullify this. Con then correctly points out that Pro gave no evidence that the government would make those reforms. Because of this, he gets this contention.
C3: Court Clog
Con argues that courts would be clogged with trials if there were no plea bargains. Pro's rebuttal is that the government will make reforms that nullify this, but Con defends extensively by showing how the government has an incentive not to make these reforms and also by showing sources that say that not all of America is on board with those reforms. Pro didn't respond, so Con gets this point.
Overall, this was a disappointing debate. It started out amazing (I didn't even know this was a topic up for discussion), but after each party rebutted once, they defended just a little and ended. I expected a lot more clashing and defending.
That said, Con did a better job of critiquing Pro's points, as well as of defending his own, so I'm giving Con arguments.
Sources:
Con uses a ridiculous amount of statistics to back up his points. Although Pro did use some too, Con critiqued them very well, and Pro never disputed Con's. Pro also cited whole passages from his sources, which I consider to be wrong. Sources should be used for verification of facts, not for whole arguments. I'm giving sources to Con.
Good job to both debaters. :)
*Tied In All Other Categories
Yes I did. I could argue the con position as well, and think the con position is less abstract giving it an advantage, but I have a legitimate interest in addressing the massive injustices caused by allowing people to plea bargain
Did you want to take the Pro position?
Any chance you would do this debate again. It should be easy for you since your first round is already written?
Thank you. I'm trying to get past my biases on the matter and think about what works for everyone.
Interesting suggestions. Will have a chat with bsh about them in the am
C Tribunal.
This system would send all reported votes into a public tribunal that can be voted on by anybody on the website. This would give the public a voice in whether or not the vote was fair or not. The key here is to put the power in as many hands as possible. It's not that I don't trust any particular moderator. But no moderator can make the right decision all of the time.
I could probably come up with more. But I've already went on too long.
Sorry, ran out of filibustering space :)
I've thought at length about this and I see the possible problems with a completely open system, so I've brought a few suggestions.
1. Sectioned Ballots. = This would consist of turning the voting card into a type of homework assignment. There's lots of ways you could do this. You could have a section for each round of the debate and they must fill out a description for each round. This could even be reduced further by having the debaters frame their premises in a formatted section during the start of each round. The second option would be optimal, but would limit the flexibility of debate styles and would require probably too much footwork on the coding end. The advantage to the first option is that it's just flexible enough to fit all standard formats and would also make it easier to vote. I think the best way to moderate this option would be to put more general focus on the effort that the voter puts into their vote. Pragmatically speaking, it's more important that the voter's RFD is sincere rather than whether or not it's logical. In the end, none of us can really say that one methodology of logic is superior to another on any specific topic. Only in a broad sense.
2. Public Moderation.
This one is more vague because I honestly don't know the best way to implement it. But the general idea would be to have a downvoting type system similar to what you say on youtube. There's several ways to do this.
A. Tournament system. In this system, Vote can be liked or disliked and only the votes at the top X spots of the list will count toward the debate. This could also be done in intervals. (X spots are full vote Y votes are half votes, etc.)
B. Fall off system. This would be a system that would delete a vote if it gets downvoted too much. Up votes don't have to exist in this system, but they could as a counterbalance to stop unfair downvoting.
C. Tribunal. to be continued.
I feel like the current voting system leaves much to be desired. This is not in direct reference to my personal experience with the site, because for the most part, my votes have been handled more or less how I probably would have handled them under the current standard.
Let's call it the problem of judgement.
To vote objectively, one needs an objective standard.
The current voting system is certainly not arbitrary, but it doesn't have a truly objective standard.
Voters are objectively required to assess the arguments in an itemized fashion, but there is no rigid standard by which to control how these things are judged.
So far, the closets thing I've seen to regulating this problem is the standard that "the voter may not draw an outside conclusion". It's certainly a good start, but it has problems itself.
It would logically follow, that for a voter to vote, they'd have to at least take on one outside conclusion when weighing the burden of proof at the end.
to elaborate. If one is judging two arguments using only what the debaters have said, then the voter will be stuck with whatever convoluted logic that is presented by the debaters.
In general, the voter must judge whether they "believe" said arguments respectively.
But this causes a problem. If a voter believes or disbelieves based solely on the confines of the debater's arguments, then the voter is essentially trapped in a forced dichotomy where they must only adopt confidence based on two possible lines of reason that may not even logically follow with the burden of proof.
Ultimately, the voter is forced to believe or disbelieve based on their own general attitudes toward things. This means there will always be a subjective element and many voters will outright vote in a post hoc fashion (checking the points box first and explaining it after, I'm sure nobody's 100 percent innocent of doing this even if it was because they read the debate first)
I wondered about that, lol...
It was actually me who hit the report button by mistake :haha:
Lol
I think I may have reported the debate. I subscribe to debates that are near their final round and then unsubscribe when I vote. I accidentally report a Ronnie as I’m on mobile and end up clicking the wrong one :P
Than you!
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>Reported Vote: IsaiahDude543 // Mod action: Removed
>Points Awarded: 7 points to Pro
>Reason for Decision: Big V all the way
>Reason for Mod Action: The voter re-voted in a way that can only be interpreted as a deliberate choice to ignore site voting policy, which was explained to him when his previous vote was removed. Further attempts to vote without making any genuine effort to meet the standards set out in the site's voting policy will result in the loss of the voter's voting privileges.
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Yeah and that's why I didn't go as hard against your case as I did as I didn't htink it would be fair. I'd love to redo this debate. I think I needed some more evidence in my rebuttals. Had I provided that, I think I would have won.
Thanks for the vote. Yeah, I didn't realize I could only defend. I wanted to add more refutations. It would have been unfair as it was the end of the debate though.
No problem
Lol! Thanks for listening to our rambling. Blamonkey is a tough cookie to beat.
20 minutes of my life down the drain, that's every vote I've ever given for a debate between either of you, y'all talk too much lol
I'm so sleepy right now that I posted this comment to the wrong debate xD
Thanks for a great RFD!!
I care about the integrity of the voting process and will report any vote that doesn't meet the standards on my debate - especially the ones who are on my side.
I don't mean this in a rude way, but I'm surprised your reporting a vote that would help you. It's something that would take guts for me.
Already done. Even though the vote will be removed, I cannot remove votes on my own debate even when it clearly does not meet our standards. The vote has already been reported and bsh1 will get to it as soon as he can.
You might want to report the vote by IsaiahDude543.
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>Reported Vote: Dustandashes // Mod action: Removed
>Points Awarded: 3 points to Pro for arguments
>Reason for Decision: So I came to this debate with a totally open mind, I didn't have a particular opinion about this matter. This was a fantastic debate and both debaters cleary know what they are talking about. In honestly, I believe blamonkey did a fantastic job of working within the framework of consequentialism. Dare I say he might have done a better job at this than virtuoso... On the surface. What was not negated however was the resolution. I feel virtuoso conclusively proved in his opening statement that plea bargaining is indeed a miscarriage of justice. Regardless of what would happen to this prison system if we were to abolish plea bargaining is not nearly as bad a consequence as innocent people going to prison. So I feel, although this debate was really close, virtuoso took this one. Thank you guys
>Reason for Mod Action: To award argument points, the voter must (1) survey the main arguments and counterarguments in the debate, (2) weigh those arguments and counterarguments against each other, and (3) explain, based on the weighing process, how they reached their decision. The voter performs none of these steps; therefore, their vote is insufficient. The voter may re-vote by performing these steps. The voter can access site voting policy here: https://www.debateart.com/rules
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>Reported Vote: IsaiahDude543 // Mod action: Removed
>Points Awarded: 4 points to Pro for arguments and conduct, 2 points to Con for sources
>Reason for Decision: I feel that this is the right choice
>Reason for Mod Action: To award argument points, the voter must (1) survey the main arguments and counterarguments in the debate, (2) weigh those arguments and counterarguments against each other, and (3) explain, based on the weighing process, how they reached their decision. To award sources points, the voter must (1) explain how the debaters' sources impacted the debate, (2) directly assess the strength/utility of at least one source in particular cited in the debate, and (3) explain how and why one debater's use of sources overall was superior to the other's. To award conduct points, the voter must (1) give explicit examples of misconduct, (2) show how this misconduct was either excessive, unfair, or in violation of mutually agreed upon rules of conduct pertaining to the text of the debate, and (3) compare each debater's conduct in the debate. For all points awarded, the voter performs none of the requisite steps to award those points. The voter can access site voting policy here: https://www.debateart.com/rules
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Thank you
He buddy. Great debate! I definitely think that you won.
bump
u
m
p
bumping for votes
not sure if there are reliable polling for it.
What percentage? Can you provide a source?
yep
Do you know how many people support abolishing plea bargaining?
I’m a student and part time retail worker
What's your job?
I’ll post my arguments when I get home from work
Thanks. He’s a great debater. I thoroughly enjoyed our last debate.
Blamonkey is good at debating. He's is as of the time of this comment 8-0. I wish you good luck.
Cool! Sorry, I forgot to post.
My opening arguments are ready whenever you are.