Debateball: Election 16 Debate

Interactive scoring game for watching presidential debates in Election 2016

Debateball brings together two American favorites, baseball and debate, in a fun way to watch presidential debates 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

• You (user) are the UMPIRE.

• SELECT DEBATE to ump. Once you begin a debate, you must complete it within one week of your first call, after which time you will no longer be able to play the debate.

• On SELECT BATTER screen, select as many or as few BATTERS (political candidates) as you want to track in any given debate. Only candidates that participated in a given debate can be selected.

• Tap PLAY

• Think of the debate moderator as the PITCHER. When the moderator calls on a BATTER, SELECT that BATTER on the play screen by tapping on him or her.

• Make your CALL just as soon as the BATTER concludes his/her remarks. SINGLE TAP will give you a pop-up explanation of the call. LONG TAP will make the call automatically. 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. Share your scoreboard on social media, using the share function, located above the scoreboard. Unlock premium features to view scoreboards of your social friends playing Debateball.

• View SEASON STATS to check how you called previous debates. Unlock premium features to view average scores of all Debateball users for all the debates. AVG indicates the candidate’s batting average—the number of questions the candidate fielded, divided by total runs, multiplied by 1000.

• NOTE: DEBATEBALL is a tool to help you determine who you think won the debate by providing good, direct answers to the questions they were asked by moderators.