In which we sum up the e-ballot experience

Well, that’s that. The last big tournament of the year. Whew!

This has been an eventful season for one thing especially: e-balloting. We’ve been doing e-ballots for years, admittedly, but always in very controlled environments. They’ve been in single buildings, with lots of runners to check on things. Once or twice the school wifis have been inadequate for the job, and we’ve had to switch over to paper ballots. At Wee Sma Lex this year, when tabroom went down, we also made an emergency run to paper (and continued on schedule). We had used e-ballots in controlled college situations, maybe running one division that was, again, in one building, like at Columbia in the past.

These experiences proved beyond a doubt that not only did e-ballots provide convenience, but they also speeded up a tournament. The time saving was, first, we had the results the second the last ballot was entered. Turnaround time remained the same, but then we posted and blasted assignments, and everyone knew where to go instantly. Our estimate was that a half hour per round was saved this way. That adds up over a long tournament weekend.

But here’s the problem. Always there were luddites, unprepared and/or tech illiterate. These were the handful for whom we would have to print paper ballots, undermining the whole process. And secondly, there was the problem of distance. What would happen if we tried it on a big division spread out over a big college campus? Or even more dramatic, if we tried it on multiple divisions spread out over a big college campus?

It was time to find out.

We broke the ice at Princeton, for the two divisions of LD. Theoretically, the LD community had already been introduced to e-balloting, since the pool comprised mostly experienced judges one way or the other. There were a couple of important prerequisites. All judges had to be able to do e-ballots, and all judges had to submit to the process of pressing start when and only when they were starting. We made that happen by imposing generous fines on people. You don’t have a tabroom account? We fine you and replace you when your name comes up marked as a luddite. The fine notice is sent to the coach instantly. You don’t press start? We fine you and replace you. The fine notice is sent to the coach instantly. But I’m here, you would say. I was in the round. I judged the round! The education that ensued at this point was, you sat down and I gently explained to you that the only way I could do my job is for you to do your job. Correctly. I would tell them to listen, don’t argue, and I will remove the fine, and you will either link to tabroom (“I’ll set you up right now,” I would say helpfully) or learn to press start in the appropriate fashion.

It worked. Still does.

Another thing we learned is the beauty of the poke. We set up a process of: blast 30 minutes before the round; 10-minute warning before the round; start now blast at start time; poke individual judges whose rounds haven’t started 5 minutes after start time, beginning with anonymous texts and escalating to phone calls; 10-minute warning at the end of the round (we inevitably needed to turn around rooms); pokes at various escalating levels when there were a few recalcitrant yabbos having trouble getting the damned thing finished.

It worked.

At Columbia we spread out from LD to PF. Our thought was that, at Princeton, all the PF people saw the LD people not schlepping around with paper and wanted into the act. They did. The PF pool, notoriously out of step with debate reality, buckled under. Two different events sharing the same rooms in alternating time slots.

It worked.

At Penn? 5 divisions, JV and Varsity, PF, LD and Policy. We were now in full swing with a process for getting the rounds to happen.

It worked.

I would like to say that this ends the need for humans in the tab room, except that the chasing down of unstarted rounds, or rounds that haven’t started but the judge says they’ve started (like the schmegeggies who press start at the same time for both flights fifteen minutes before flight 1) has not ended. Subbing in and forfeiting student no-shows and unforfeiting student no-shows is an issue. Customer service is an issue. Kaz answers the phone like she works for a spa (“This is Kaz in tab. How can I help you?”) where as I just grunt out the word “Tab!” Same effect. Please, on the other hand, don't ask me non-round-related questions when I’m trying to put out fires. “What’s the schedule?” “It’s on tabroom.” “Where on tabroom?” “Just look for it, you yabbo! I’m trying to run a bloody tournament here.” “Well, that’s not very helpful. I thought this was a help line.” “Oh, sorry. Let me look that up for you. Tournament, would you mind stopping for a minute while I find a velvet pillow to present this person with information they could easily have found for themselves if they had an iota of wit?”

Sigh.

Anyhow, I’ll write up a process for e-ballots and put it into the Toolkit. No reason not to share it with the tiny world that might be interested.

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