Today, the NFHS announced the results of the first round of balloting for the 2022-2023 high school policy debate resolution:

The National Federation of State High School Associations recently tabulated debate ballots from 34 states, Washington D.C., the National Speech and Debate Association, the National Debate Coaches Association, the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues, and the National Catholic Forensic League. The returned ballots narrowed the five proposed topics to two for placement on the final ballot to select the 2022-2023 national high school debate topic. The five topic areas were ranked 1-5 with the two topic areas receiving the lowest totals – Climate Change and Emerging Technologies – placed on the final ballot. On January 10, 2022, the NFHS will announce the preferred topic area and resolution after states and national organizations are able to place a final vote. The 2022-2023 national high school debate topic and resolution will be posted on the NFHS Speech and Debate webpage and sent to state associations and affiliate members.

The final ballot will include the following two resolutions:

1. Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its support of multilateral greenhouse gas emission reduction regimes.

2. Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its security cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in one or more of the following areas: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cybersecurity.

The resolution that receives the most votes from state and national organizations will be selected as next year’s topic. Voting ends on January 4th and the winning topic will be announced on January 10th.

On my first round ballot, I ranked these resolutions fifth and fourth respectively. We also discussed these topics and the overall NFHS process on episode two of Burden of Rejoinder.

There are two interesting takeaways from these results.

First, state participation was relatively strong.

You can see year-by-year voting participation in this spreadsheet (if the embedded version is unreadable, open it in a separate window):

The spreadsheet includes the last four years of first round balloting and the last five years of final round balloting.

This year, the following states submitted a first round vote: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, D.C., Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

That means the following 17 states did not submit a vote: Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, and West Virginia.

There are active policy debate programs in several of these states, and three — Kentucky, Louisiana, and Michigan — voted as recently as last year. I hope that the NFHS reaches out to these state representatives to encourage them to participate in the process in the future.

Second, the ranked choice method of voting had a significant impact on this year’s results.

Here’s the graphic that the NFHS shared to show the voting breakdown:

Analyzing this chart is imprecise, but the ranking of first place votes was as follows:

1. Health Security
2. Russia
3. Climate Change
4. Emerging Technologies
5. Treaties

And the ranking of first plus second choice votes was as follows:

1. Emerging Technology (or Russia — it is hard to tell)
2. Russia
3. Health Security
4. Climate Change
5. Treaties

Neither of these metrics produced the final slate. Instead, the determining factor was the number of fourth and fifth place votes. Here are the topics ordered from least to most combined fourth and fifth place votes:

1. Emerging Technologies
2. Climate Change
3. Russia
4. Health Security
5. Treaties

Because the first and second place votes were relatively balanced, the share of fourth and fifth place votes decided this election.

This is also reflected in the ranking of the topics based on their combined first, second, and third place votes:

1. Emerging Technologies
2. Climate Change
3. Russia
4. Health Security
5. Treaties

So, which topic will win the final vote?

Based on the first round voting, it seems like the Emerging Technologies topic should be favored to win. While Climate Change had a larger share of first place votes, Emerging Technologies had a larger share of combined first and second place votes, a larger share of combined first and second and third place votes, and fewer combined fourth and fifth place votes.

However, Climate Change finished (slightly) higher than Emerging Technologies in the NDCA’s first round balloting:

1. Russia
2. Treaties
3. Climate Change
4. Emerging Technologies
5. Global Health

As far as I can tell, the NSDA has not (yet) released its first round ballot. If one of the two topics finished high on the NSDA’s ballot, that can be a good predictor of the final results.

Which topic should win? While I ranked Emerging Technologies ahead of Climate Change on my first round ballot, I’m not ready to answer that question yet. I’ll do some more research and share my opinion in a future post.