Ooops I meant my summary to state:
To summarize, I do not believe that "Not responding" members
should be counted as present for quorum puposes on an email vote.
Tom Rutt wrote:
> If a member is not present at a meeting, they do not get counted
> towards quarum. There votes are "not Present" rather than "abstain".
>
> Why is it not the same for email votes. If the member is on vacation
> for a month, and do not respond to the mail, they should be counted as
> not present for purposes of quorum.
>
> One quarum is verified, it realy does not matter whether "not present"
> is treated as abstain, as the effect is the same in the final majority
> calculations.
>
> To summarize, I do not believer that "Not responding" members really
> should not be counted for quarum puposes on an email vote.
>
> Please let me know if my interpretation is not correct.
>
> Tom Rutt
> Fujitsu
> WSRM chair
>
> Tony Jewtushenko wrote:
>
>> Am I mistaken - doesn't OASIS followed Roberts Rules of Order?
>> Customising the rules for membership/quorum is one thing, but to
>> customise fundemental rules on voting and achieving quorum is, in my
>> opinion, no different than making it up as you go.
>>
>> Roberts Rules <http://www.constitution.org/rror/rror-08.htm#46> is
>> clear on the topic of voting:
>> "When a quorum [64] is present, a majority vote, that is a majority
>> of the votes cast, ignoring blanks, is sufficient for the adoption
>> of any motion that is in order, except those mentioned in 48, which
>> require a two-thirds vote."
>>
>> Note that for our purposes, an abstention should be equivalent to a
>> "blank". Furthermore, an abstention is considered an appropriate
>> vote in its own right:
>> "While it is the duty of every member who has an opinion on the
>> question to express it by his vote, yet he cannot be compelled to do
>> so. He may prefer to abstain from voting, though he knows the effect
>> is the same as if he voted on the prevailing side."
>>
>> Therefore, nullifying a vote where you have 2 yeahs, one nay and a
>> couple dozen abstentions is inappropriate - the question should
>> carry. The Yeah's woudl win even when a 2/3 majority vote is
>> required, since blank votes are not counted.
>> "Two-thirds Vote. A two-thirds vote means two-thirds of the votes
>> cast, ignoring blanks which should never be counted. This must not
>> be confused with a vote of two-thirds of the members present, or
>> two-thirds of the members, terms sometimes used in by-laws. "
>>
>> With respect to the issue of membership and quorum - I think the
>> answer is to bite the bullet and terminate memberships of those who
>> are chronically absent. The TC I lead recently had frequent problems
>> achieving quorum because of a couple of long term absentees, wo we
>> went through a painful membership / attendence audit that resulted in
>> revoking TC memberhip of 3 members (out of a total of 19), one of
>> whom was an original founding member. We haven't had any problems
>> achieving a quorum since, but I'll admit it was a painful process.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Tony Jewtushenko, Chair - XLIFF TC
>>
>>
>> Lauren Wood wrote:
>>
>>> [I cut down the CC list assuming everyone is on the chairs mailing
>>> list - L]
>>>
>>> On 18 Feb 2003 at 22:44, Eduardo Gutentag wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> That may be true in theory, but in the practice, when in a 20 person TC
>>>> an email vote elicits 2 yes votes and 1 no vote and the rest either
>>>> send "I abstain" messages or none at all, people are quite reluctant
>>>> to consider the matter settled in favor of the motion. Most would say,
>>>> and have said, that the vote doesn't and shouldn't count.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> If everyone else abstains or can't be bothered voting, doesn't that
>>> mean they don't care about the result of that vote? So why shouldn't
>>> it count? I could see saying that a certain percentage of the TC must
>>> vote in one of the three ways, which would imply if you don't care
>>> what the result is you must explicitly say you don't care by
>>> abstaining. How is this different to the common "if no objections,
>>> it's carried"?
>>> Lauren
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Lauren Wood, Chair, Entity Resolution TC
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>>> To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription
>>> manager: <http://lists.oasis-open.org/ob/adm.pl>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Tony Jewtushenko mailto:
>> Sr. Tools Program Manager direct tel: +353.1.8039080
>> Product Management - Tools Technology Team
>> Oracle Corporation, Ireland
>>
>>
>
>
--
----------------------------------------------------
Tom Rutt email: ;
Tel: +1 732 801 5744 Fax: +1 732 774 5133
