The Ballot

Table of contents

1. Opening the Ballot
2. What the Ballot Contains
3. Filling the Ballot
4. Stage 1 — Individual Scoring
5. Adjudicator Discussion
6. Stage 2 — Freeze and Final Scores
7. Score Columns (Y / A / F)
8. For Debaters: Reviewing Your Scores and Feedback
   1. The card at a glance
   2. Expanding for the full picture
   3. Reading written feedback

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Adjudicators score debaters using a structured ballot. The ballot is a side drawer that an adjudicator opens from the Ballot button in the control bar of the Debate Room or the Evaluation Room. Debaters do not see it.

Scoring runs in two stages: each adjudicator fills in their own ballot privately, then the Chair freezes the ballots and enters a single final score per debater based on the adjudicators’ discussion. The discussion itself usually happens in the private Adjudicator Room during the Evaluation stage.

Opening the Ballot

In either the Debate Room or the Evaluation Room, click Ballot in the control bar. The drawer slides in from the bottom of the screen.

If you open it before picking a participant, the heading reads Select a Participant and the score fields stay disabled. Click any role in the Participants list at the bottom of the drawer to load that debater’s ballot — the heading then changes to Ballot – username, with the role (e.g. Prime Minister) shown underneath.

What the Ballot Contains

For each debater the ballot collects an overall score and four detail ratings:

Field	What it captures
Overall Score	A numeric mark (top text field, up to two digits). This is the single number that ends up on the debater’s scoresheet. For the Chair after freeze, this field is relabelled Final score and stores the agreed final mark.
Content	Five-star rating — the substance of the speech: argument quality, examples, evidence, depth of analysis.
Style	Five-star rating — delivery: voice, pace, manner, audience contact.
Strategy	Five-star rating — how well the speaker used their time: structure, prioritisation, role fulfilment, response to the state of the round.
Engagement	Five-star rating — interaction with the floor: handling of points of information, rebuttal, and use of POIs against the other side.
Text feedback	Free-form notes for the debater. Supports basic Markdown. Has an expand button for a larger editor and a preview toggle. The four ratings are quick signals; this is where you say why.

Below the form is the Participants list, grouped by team (Government / Opposition, first and second). Each role line shows the debater’s name and the score values that are currently visible to you (see Score Columns).

Filling the Ballot

1. Pick a debater from the Participants list, or use the previous / next arrows under the text-feedback editor to step through debaters in speaking order.
2. Type the overall score (one or two digits).
3. Click the stars to set Content, Style, Strategy, and Engagement.
4. Optionally write text feedback. Use the expand button for a roomier editor; toggle preview to render the Markdown.

Scores save automatically when you leave a field, click another rating, switch participants, or close the drawer — there is no explicit save button. You can re-open the ballot for the same debater at any time and the values come back as you left them.

You can fill ballots during both the Debate stage (live, while speeches are happening) and the Evaluation stage. Whatever you enter during the debate carries over to evaluation.

Stage 1 — Individual Scoring

Each adjudicator’s ballot is private — and stays private even after the freeze:

• Only you see the overall score, the four ratings, and the text feedback on your own ballot. They are never shown to the other adjudicators, including the Chair, and never shown to the debaters.
• The Participants list shows only your scores in the Y column. The A (average) and F (final) columns are empty until the Chair freezes the ballots.
• Wing adjudicators and the Chair score independently. There is no enforced agreement at this stage.

Use this stage to capture what each speaker actually did — your own marks, ratings, and notes — without having to negotiate them yet.

Adjudicator Discussion

Between scoring and freezing, adjudicators normally discuss the round in the private Adjudicator Room. Click Discuss in the Evaluation Room’s control bar to step out of the debaters’ view; click Return to come back. The Ballot drawer is available in the Adjudicator Room too, so you can refer to your in-progress scores while you talk.

This is where the panel agrees on the team ranking and, in particular, on the final mark each debater should receive. The discussion itself is not recorded by the platform — the outcome lands in the ballot when the Chair enters the final scores in the next step.

Stage 2 — Freeze and Final Scores

When the panel has agreed, the Chair opens the Ballot in the Evaluation Room and clicks Freeze Ballots (the button only appears for the Chair, only during Evaluation, and disappears once the ballots are frozen). Freezing is irreversible for the round.

After freezing:

• Individual ballots stay private. No adjudicator (not even the Chair) sees another adjudicator’s overall score, ratings, or notes. What does become shared is the A (average) column — the mean of all adjudicators’ overall scores per debater and per team. Your Y column is still your own.
• Wing adjudicators’ Overall Score and ratings become read-only. Wings can still edit their text feedback for each debater.
• The Chair’s Overall Score field is relabelled Final score. The Chair picks each debater from the Participants list and types the agreed final mark — that value populates the F column for the debater and contributes to the F column for the team. The final score normally tracks the average but the Chair can override it to reflect what the panel agreed in the discussion.

Final scores save the same way as everything else — type the mark, then click away or pick the next debater. There is no submit step beyond freezing.

Score Columns (Y / A / F)

The Participants list inside the Ballot drawer shows a Scores line per role and per team. The columns mean:

Column	Stands for	Visible	Source
Y	You	Always (to you only)	Your own overall score for that debater. For team aggregates, the sum of your scores across the team’s two roles. Other adjudicators have their own Y on their own ballot; you never see it.
A	All	After the Chair freezes	The average of all adjudicators’ overall scores for that debater / team. Anonymous — it does not reveal who scored what.
F	Final	After the Chair enters it	The Chair’s agreed final score for that debater. For team aggregates, the sum of the Chair’s final scores across the team’s two roles.

A dash (—) means the value is not yet available. Per-role lines show one number per column; per-team header lines show the team’s aggregate.

For Debaters: Reviewing Your Scores and Feedback

After a debate ends it appears at the top of your home page under Your recent debates. Each entry is a collapsible card that holds everything the adjudicators recorded for you and a summary of how the rest of the panel was scored.

The card at a glance

The collapsed card shows the motion, the organizer, when the debate took place, and four pieces of scoring information for you as a debater:

Field on the card	What it is
My score	The Chair’s final overall mark for you (the F column from the adjudicators’ ballot).
Content / Style / Strategy / Engagement	The average of all adjudicators’ star ratings for you in each dimension, to one decimal.
Winner	The team the panel ranked first overall.

You only ever see averaged numbers and the Chair’s final mark. You never see any one adjudicator’s individual overall score or ratings — those stay private to them, exactly as the ballot section above explains for adjudicators.

Expanding for the full picture

Click the chevron at the top-right of the card (show more) to expand it. The expanded view adds:

• Participants — every role with the debater’s name and the Chair’s final score next to them. Team headers show the team total and the team’s rank in the round (1st / 2nd / 3rd / 4th).
• Adjudicators — the panel that adjudicated the round. The Chair is marked with (C); wings appear without a suffix.
• The total Duration of the debate and the time spent in each stage (Lobby / Prepare / Debate / Evaluate).

Each adjudicator’s row has a small page icon next to their name. A solid grey icon means that adjudicator left written feedback for you; a light-grey icon means they did not. Only the highlighted rows are clickable.

Reading written feedback

Click any adjudicator with a solid icon to open the Written feedback dialog. The note renders as Markdown — bold, italics, headings, lists, and links all work. Use CLOSE to dismiss the dialog and pick another adjudicator if more than one left you notes.

You only ever see the text feedback an adjudicator wrote for you specifically. Notes the same adjudicator wrote about other debaters in the round are not shown.