1954 original ballot

Here is a copy of the voting results for 1954 topic selection, archived at the W.E.B. Dubois Library at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Back then, votes were tallied individually by the forensic fraternities (TKA, DSR, PRP PKD) then totaled with a point scheme. Click on the thumbnail to inspect the vote totals and you can see that the China topic bested the ag price supports topic for the top slot. Karl Wallace, then president of the Speech Association of America, defended the Speech Association of America's choice of the 1954 China topic by pointing to the democratic nature of this selection process. West Point pushed hard for Wallace and the other SAA officers to switch to the alternate #2 ag support topic.