Tabulation Procedures and Tiebreakers

TABULATION PROCEDURES

(1) Teams from the same school will not be paired against each other during preliminary rounds, but brackets will not be broken in elimination rounds.
(a) Hybrids will be considered by tab staff to be unique schools and will not be protected from any entries.
(b) If teams from the same school are paired against one another in elimination rounds, the coach has the option of allowing the teams to debate or a walkover. If a hybrid team is paired against a team from one of the constituent schools in an elimination round, the teams will debate unless coaches from all constituent schools agree that one team should advance.

(2) Each preliminary round will be adjudicated by 2 judges. Each judge should disclose and provide a brief oral RFD. The total time for RFDs should not be longer than a combined 15 minutes for both judges.

(3) All rounds are open to the public and may be recorded. 
(a) Participation in the tournament by competitors and judges constitutes consent to recording and publication of the recordings without compensation. All recordings are the property of National Parliamentary Debate League.
(b) Spectators are allowed in all rounds, although they may be excluded based on safety concerns. NSDA Campus, which the tournament will use for preliminary rounds, does not allow spectators, so the tournament will not be able to facilitate spectating preliminary rounds this year. We anticipate hosting elimination rounds on Zoom. 
(c) Spectators may also be asked to leave the room if their behavior is disruptive to the round.

(4) The NPDL-TOC will use a speaker point scale between 24 and 30. Points may be awarded in increments of 0.1.
(a) 25 - Poor performance
(b) 26 - Signficant weaknesses
(c) 27 - Average debater
(d) 28.5 - Deserves to clear to elimination rounds
(e) 29.5 - Best debater at this event
(f) 30 - Best debater you (the judge) have ever seen

(5) Tiebreakers
(a) Total ballot count
(b) Opponent seed 
(c) Z-score 
(d) Random number generation/coin toss

(6) Any protests must be brought to the protest committee immediately after the round in question.

(7) The tournament will use mutual preference judging.