Debateball brings together two American favorites, baseball and debate, in a fun app to intelligently engage voters in Election 2016.
THE UMPIRE STRIKES BACK
Debateball is a great gateway activity to put a little fun into politics and encourage disengaged Americans to …engage. And for swing voters, Debateball is a highly useful tool to help us make sense of all the rhetoric, boil it down to runs, strikes and fouls, and decide intelligently, not just on gut or hearsay, who is a good match for your values.
Instead of tweeting through the debate, interact intelligently, contributing to an aggregate score that will indicate what voters think of candidate debate performance. We, the umpires, become the debate commentators. With DEBATEBALL, democracy is no longer a spectator sport. We make the calls!
RULES OF DEBATEBALL (abbreviated)
• You (user) are the UMPIRE.
• SELECT DEBATE to ump.
• Select as many or as few BATTERS (political candidates) as you want to track in any given debate.
• Think of the debate moderator as the PITCHER. When the moderator calls on a BATTER, SELECT that BATTER on the play screen.
• Make your CALL just as soon as the BATTER concludes his/her remarks. BATTER advances around the bases like this:
o STRIKE: Really bad answer that didn’t address the question. BATTER does not advance.
o FOUL: Poor answer that didn’t answer the question. BATTER does not advance.
o WALK: Good answer but still didn’t answer the question. BATTER advances 1 base.
o BASE HIT: Actually answered the question. BATTER advances 2 bases.
o HOME RUN: Actually answered the question with a good, even great, answer. BATTER advances 4 bases and scores one run.
• Continue to SELECT BATTERS and make CALLS, keeping pace with the debate moderator. At the end of the debate check the SCOREBOARD to easily see who won in your opinion as UMPIRE.
• View SEASON STATS to check how you called previous debates.