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

[Dave Goodell]

On Jun 14, 2012, at 11:48 AM CDT, Mohamad Chaarawi wrote:

> The ticket received 8 (yes) - 2 (no) - 6 (abstain) votes.
> After contacting the people who voted no and abstain, this was a summary of the reasons:
> 	• 1 NO vote, because of reason X 
> 	• 1 NO vote, because of a misunderstanding 
> 	• 2 abstain votes because of concerns Y and Z
> 	• 4 abstain votes because either the voters were attending the meeting for the first time and are not familiar with the ticket, or just do not understand what is being proposed or don't care. Some of them were aware that their votes means no, and some were not.
> It totally makes sense to count the 2 NO votes, and 2 of the abstains to be as NO votes, but it is ridiculous to count the last 4 abstains as NO votes. 
> IMO what should happen is that the people who are abstaining because of a certain concern should just vote NO (not abstain), and then we use the old rule as pass = yes > no. If we go with the Japan rule then people should just vote YES or NO, because the abstain category is useless.

IMO any voting rules where a strict (yes > no) condition needs some sort of safeguard to ensure that a y/n/a count of 1/0/(N-1) or 2/1/(N-3) won't pass.  Some requirement should be in place to ensure a nontrivial degree of consensus was actually achieved.  I'm not sure what it should be, but "no more than 50% abstains" might be a starting point for discussion.  Your ticket would have been fine under such a restriction, although it would have been close (6/16).

FWIW, I do think it's unfortunate that your ticket did not pass (I believe that ANL even voted yes).  But when you say "some of them were aware the their votes means no" and then claim "it is ridiculous to count the last 4 abstains as NO votes", then I see a contradiction.  At least some of those 4 should be considered valid "effective NO" votes.  Am I misunderstanding you?

-Dave