One of the many blessings in my life was participating in high school and college debate teams. At tournaments like the one where the debate in this article took place, each participating team provides a judge that the tournament organizers assign to judge the various debates. I judged many dozens, maybe hundreds of high school debates, and it was very simple to let what the debaters said determine who did the better job of debating (and that was the explicit bottom line, preprinted on most ballots, in deciding which team won the debate). If one team ignores an argument posed by the other, and the debaters asserted a particular impact for that argument, the judge would have clear reason to accept the assertions of the only team that discussed that argument, even if the judge had strong personal feelings about the argument.
Interesting, thanks for the input. I’ve no experience whatsoever regarding such debate formats.
So this debate in question seems to completely violate the premise you define. The judge is declaring what arguments are even allowed to be made, which is a complete interference in the intended process.
The guy that was presenting has since posted some additional Youtube video’s due to the responses he’s received.