[Mpi-forum] Voting in July (and beyond)

[Dave Goodell]

On Jun 14, 2012, at 10:53 AM CDT, David Solt wrote:

>> At the Japan meeting we took consensus from the room because there was 
>> no clear ruling on this known to *anyone* in the room.
> 
> I disagree.  I felt there was a clear ruling on this and stated that at 
> the Japan meeting.

Perhaps my "anyone" statement was slightly too strong.  Nonetheless, I don't recall many (any?) others with a similar level of conviction.

> I don't know how people can be so out of touch with 
> what goes on at the meetings to not know how we have been voting for 
> years.


The way that this happens is that both interpretations of the rules have always yielded the same result in the past.  Only at the Japan meeting did we encounter a set of votes that would result in different outcomes under each interpretation.

As Jeff has repeatedly pointed out, the voting rules web page is ambiguous, and reading it tends to just confirm the reader's view, regardless of which view that is.  Years of voting in which the results match up with someone's interpretation (true for both interpretations) further reinforces a particular viewpoint.

-Dave