Re: SUO: RE: Re: Gathering Questions (No vs. Abstain) -- resend
At 14:44 2002-01-23 -0500, John F. Sowa wrote:
>
> ...
> Bottom line: An abstention is not equivalent to a no vote.
> It is a request to defer a decision until the people who made
> the proposal provide sufficient information to base a firm
> decision one way or the other.
Bottom Line: If you count Abstain responses as No votes, i.e.:
Yes > No+Abstain
Then Abstain responses count as No votes for the purposes of decision-making. No matter how much John wants you to believe otherwise, they count (in a measurable way) identically and have the same effect as No votes for the purposes of decision-making.
This is why Roberts (and the Computer Society) use Yes > No. In Robert's Rules, it discusses the pros and cons of other potential schemes for voting, including one line the kind that John is proposing (Yes > No + Abstain):
Voting requirements based on the number of members present -- a majority of those present, two thirds of those present, etc. -- while possible, are generally undesirable. Since an abstention in such cases has the same effect as a negative vote, these bases deny members the right to maintain a neutral position by abstaining. For the same reason, member who fail to vote through indifference rather than through deliberate neutrality may affect the result negatively.
I believe many other people have given consideration to these kind of voting schemes (e.g., enough to have it written about in Robert's) and arrive at the obvious conclusions: when you count Abstain responses as No votes, Abstains count negatively.
Notice that Robert's does not try to give the "meaning" to Abstains as John suggests. Robert's does suggest that Abstains are about maintaining a "neutral position" (for whatever reason) and does not try to associate any further meaning with the Abstain response. Robert's explains Abstains:
RIGHT OF ABSTENTION. Although it is the duty of every member who has an opinion on a question to express it by his vote, he can abstain, since he cannot be compelled to vote.
Abstains are responses, but non-votes.
-FF
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