I am a parent of a Timpview High School debate student. I did not participate in debate as a student, and have not judged very many debate tournaments.

I appreciate when debaters can present their arguments clearly and succinctly rather than speed reading through a list of flow points as fast as they can.

For LD, I will evaluate the round using an interpretive framework. This establishes an approach to the resolution and presents evaluative positions to the judge. For each resolution, no matter what side you are advocating you
should ask yourself, not only what must I defend but to which degree must I defend it? Must my
position (and my opponents') be true always or true most of the time? What exceptions can be
made and which exceptions cannot be tolerated? Your interpretive framework should explicitly
answer these questions.

I consider a myriad of factors in my judging, but, to a certain degree, place various degrees of importance on these factors.

First, and most importantly, your case needs to be based in evidence from reputable sources, citing the date along with these sources and making your evidence as quantifiable as possible. This is not to say that I discourage expert opinion, I simply deem empirical data and past precedence to be the best evidence.

Make sure to warrant all of your evidence and refutation before or after you give it, explaining why your point makes sense logically. Simply saying "the opposite is true!" without providing further explanation isn't going to win my ballot.

Second, you need to have good delivery. The most important factors that constitute good delivery include variety in tone, speed, and intonation, eye contact, and good hand gestures. Use your delivery to keep me entertained!

Third, please refute other debaters in the round. I would especially encourage this in Congress, as refutation is scarce in this event on many circuits. To the extent that you do not attack people personally, and that you are simply attacking their argument, I believe strong refutation, alongside good evidence, to be central to a good debate round.

Fourth, make good use of rhetoric throughout your speech. Simply put, you cannot win a round simply by refuting other speakers, though it certainly helps. If you want to remove any doubt in your judge's mind, and my mind, about the validity of your case, weigh the debate, showing why your impacts, and their underlying morals (no, I am not just talking about LD) explicitly beat the other side. On the other side, make your rhetoric memorable and creative. Arguments and delivery are good, but if you entertain me with good rhetoric, you will almost certainly stand out in my mind as a judge, provided you have the essentials which I mentioned previously in this paradigm.

Above all, just have fun!