This ties to of my previous posts together - know the rules and particularly the scoring of Toastmasters contests and realize how conservative Toastmasters (especially judges) are.

Let’s say you have some iffy piece of humor. Maybe it borders on offensive, or maybe it’s kind of out there, the type of thing one or two judges won’t get. Let’s also say that there are 6 judges. And for the sake of this discussion, let’s say that when the contest comes you run away with it. At most contests it’s obvious who the first place is and most of the time it’s obvious who the 2nd place person is, too. Having three speeches that are viable doesn’t happen as often as it should, even at the District Level.

(You may think I’m a snob saying that having >2 speeches in a contest that deserve to win is not common. I’m not. I’m not trying to discourage people, I’ve entered contests with so-so material and I learned from getting clobbered. I’m just being brutally honest.)

Anyway, let’s say you have some joke about how you did pot in college. It was done in passing, no one laughs because TM’s are conservative, but the rest of your speech was beautiful. Only two people were truly offended at your pot reference. Unfortunately, those two people were judges. They were so offended they decide to leave you off the ballot entirely. You don’t even get a measly 3rd place out of them because they don’t want you continuing.

So on the 1st 4 judges ballots, you got all 4 first place votes. 4 1st place * 3 points per = 12 points. Your nearest competitor got all the 2nd place votes. So 4 * 2 = 8. So far, so good for you.

On the offended judges’ ballots, you’re off entirely, so you get 0 points. The guy (or gal) that came in 2nd on the other ballots came in 1st here. So 3 * 2 = 6.

When you add it together, you get 12 + 0 = 12 points. Your competitor got 8 + 6 = 14. Who won?

I’ve been at contests where I swear that has happened. I’ve never seen a pot reference, but it feels like a contestant must have rubbed a few judges the wrong way, because when they don’t get 1st people ask how it played out like that.

This applies to any contest of course, but humorous and table topics are the ones people are more likely get themselves in hot water.