Background
As no bid was presented at Council this year, the process of selecting a host for WUDC 2017 was delayed and scheduled to occur via an online vote. Below, you will find an outline of the process by which this will occur, in line with the deadlines Council voted to put in place.
We request that any challenges or requests for changes/clarifications to this process be emailed to the Council Chair by the 21st of February, to avoid any disputes derailing the bid process itself.
Eligibility to Vote
Unlike as occurred with the online bid vote following Manila (2012), we intend for all countries that hold a voting status to be eligible to vote, regardless of their attendance in Malaysia. This is because voting status at WUDC is held regardless of attendance at any given WUDC, and countries are able to send delegates to meetings of Council at Worlds at which they do not have teams (see: the Netherlands this year). As a Committee, we feel that absent a Council ruling setting voting eligibility to just those countries in attendance at Council in Malaysia, it would be arbitrary for us to prevent countries that would have been able to vote in Malaysia had they wanted to from voting now. A list of those countries eligible to vote can be found here: http://goo.gl/SWX1Lz.
In order to avoid disputes, we will aim to have a complete list of confirmed Country Delegates by the 28th of February. This will be publicly available for correction throughout February, and we would prefer that countries refrain from changing their Country Delegate during March to avoid any possible disputes over who is able to cast a vote.
Declaration of Intention to Bid
Council set a deadline for bids to be declared of the 1st of March. To that end, we will require that all institutions intending to put forward a bid for consideration email the Council Chair (madelinejschultz@gmail.com) by 23:59GMT on the 1st of March; stating the name of the institution under which they are bidding, and outlining pertinent details, including:
- the name(s) of their Convenor(s)
- the name(s) of the Adjudication Core member(s) with whom they intend to bid
- the location at which they intend to host the tournament.
This information will be provided to all Country Delegates within 24 hours (by 23:59GMT on the 2nd of March), and advertised to the debating community at large.
Consideration of Bids
Committee will be maintaining a variety of global forums for discussion of the bids presented throughout March. Further information about these forums will be available soon; however, our goal will be to ensure that information and discussion about all bids be available as globally as possible. We understand that debaters in some part of the world face legal and/or logistical barriers to accessing commonly used debater discussion spaces (such as those on Facebook), and will be endeavouring to correct for this as much as possible.
Voting Process
Council set a date for the vote to occur of the 1st of April. The vote will be conducted as follows:
At 23:59GMT on the 29th of March, all confirmed Country Delegates will receive an email. Each Country Delegate will be required to “Reply All” by 23:59GMT on the 1st of April with the following information:
- their name
- the country that they represent
- the bid for which they are voting
This information will be publicly tallied as it is received. In the event that the bid is contested between more than two institutions/bids (see below), the final count will be conducted on the 2nd of April.
At this point in time, we believe that it is possible that we will have a bid contested by more than two institutions. While the Constitution is silent on the process to use in such circumstances, the last time this occurred (Thailand, 2008), the bid vote was conducted by a runoff (an initial vote occurred, followed by a vote between the two bids with the largest number of votes in the initial vote). Several complexities make this a less than ideal process for this year – firstly, we do not at this point know whether the bid will be contested by more than three institutions; and secondly, one potential host has expressed an intention to submit two distinct bids. This presents problems for runoff-style voting, as in a four (or more) way contest, it is possible that the countries voting for the fourth bid might prefer the third bid to either of the first and second bids, and would be denied the opportunity to express that preference – even where, in combination, the fourth and third bids would have more votes than both the first and second.
As a result, in order to accurately reflect the preferences of countries, if more than two bids are received, we intend to conduct the vote by way of preferential (transferable) vote. This will occur as follows:
- each Country Delegate will list all bids in order of preference, rather than simply stating a single first preference
- the bid with the fewest first preferences will be eliminated, and the votes of the Country Delegates who had voted for it will be transferred to their second preference
- this process will continue until two bids remain. At this point, the bid holding the most votes will have been selected
Questions/Concerns About This Process
We request that any questions or concerns about this process be directed to the Council Chair, Madeline Schultz, prior to the 21st of February. We are aware that bid processes can easily become contentious, particularly when conducted over extended periods of time and online; and hope to avoid any disputes about the vote process tainting the decision-making process itself. To that end, except where absolutely necessary, we do not intend to make any changes to this process after February.
We are aware that constitutional ambiguity has required us to make several decisions about how to conduct the vote that have, in some other years, been made in other ways. We are very willing to revisit these decisions should there be substantial concern about them, but feel that they set up the fairest possible basis upon which to conduct a vote. If members of the debating community feel that these decisions should be revisited, we urge them to contact us as soon as possible.