If you agree that there's still an unhealthy level of dishonesty in Congress research, then two sentences from the all-boldfaced Source Integrity section of the Blue Key rules packet at bluekeydebate.org ought to interest you.
Debaters must make said sources available to either their opponent(s) in the round, and/or their judges after the round upon request. Debate entries failing to do so, or debaters who significantly misrepresent sources in the round may be disqualified at the discretion of Tab.
The Source Integrity language isn't a sub-section of any of the debate events, so if one considers Congressional Debate as a debate event (it's in the name), these rules ought to apply.
Under traditional rules, judges can't ask to see sketchy-sounding evidence unless it's questioned or challenged in round by a debater, and no debater ever does that because, well, no one wants to start a war with another team or region or summer camp. The upside of challenging a cheater is that you get to pants someone who's turning Congress into the Olympic event of hyper-fluent lying, but the downside risk is seldom perceived to be worth it.
The traditional rules work fine in the small-room debate events (PF, LD, Policy) because those debaters really don't care how anyone feels about them at the end of the round. There's a huge incentive, then, for small-room debaters to police themselves, and since extra time-on-topic lets small-room debaters familiarize themselves with the research base, they actually spot fabrications more easily. Congress, restlessly consuming topics like a shark and never looking back, just doesn't work that way.
This year's Blue Key rules, though, allow me as a judge to ask any debater for any suspicious card without having to hope that anyone else will burn a precious cross-ex question on it.
So when someone says that Cuba is in possession of a special mineral which, when manufactured into a drug, will lower US entitlement spending by 20% (NFL Nats Indianapolis), I could ask for the card. And when someone says that according to RAND, US adoption of Network Neutrality regulations would double the number of Middle East uprisings (CatNats Baltimore), I could ask for that card. Heritage says we should double the minimum wage (Minneapple 2013)? Show me the card. The New York Times reports that US drone strikes could destroy the Iranian nuclear program (Minneapple 2012)? The Economic Policy Institute says environmental regulations cost every American family 10 grand (TOC '14)? Card, card, card.
As it is now, I just call these people out on ballots and if I can't imagine some reasonable doubt, I drop them. But my one ballot hasn't kept cheaters from breaking.
As much as allowing educators to enforce honesty in the event appeals to me because it allows hard-researching debaters to even the score against those born with the gift of gab, I don't actually prefer Blue Key's solution. If these rules went national, it would only be a matter of time before some second-year-out Machiavelli used repeated unsubstantiated evidence challenges to cast a shadow over a debater just for the sake of it. That could delegitimize the activity, too. The best solution would be for debaters themselves to run cheaters out of Congresstown and into Oratory, where they'd be mostly harmless.
But that isn't going to happen, at least not until judges show that evidence matters by asking for it themselves, and Blue Key's answer is better than any other tournament's answer to date.
