SUO: [Fwd: Voting Rules]
Title:
Jim,
In the vote to which you refer (the August 2001 vote in the SUMO), Lyle
Smith, the IEEE Parliamentarian, reported the results provided by you (see
Note 1). You did not report on members
present and entitled to vote at the time of the vote. Being present and
not voting is abstaining. Voting ABSTAIN is also abstaining. Since the
vote had already occurred, Lyle ruled on the information you provided. The
original purpose of permitting an explicit vote to abstain in this WG was
to protect future voting rights of members who did not wish to cast a YES
or NO vote on a particular issue but wanted to record their presence. The
rule (based on NY law) was and is a majority of the members present and entitled
to vote.
You do have a history of inventing the rules you prefer - e.g. declaring
a quorum unnecessary, counting only YES vs NO votes, not including members
present in calculating vote results, etc. - all of these conveniently beneficial
to the passage of the SUMO motion. After all the debate, legal opinions,
formal positions taken by the Board of Governors and instructions from the
IEEE-SA since 2001, it is not possible for you to plead ignorance of these
rules. (see Note 2)
The SUMO motion failed.
Bob
Note 1
From Lyle Smith, IEEE Parliamentarian, to Jim Schoening
- September 2001
> Lyle,
>
> I understand you can help me with some rules. I chair P1600.1
> Standard Upper Ontology (SUO) WG, http://suo.ieee.org. Here are the salient
> facts and postings.
>
> a. SUO WG conducted an email ballot of whether a document should become a
> base document. The ballot was open for 3-weeks. It passed 17-16, with 9
> ABSTAINS.
Answer: New York Not-for-Profit Law and the IEEE Bylaws state that to pass
a motion requires a majority of those present, and not a majority of those present
and voting. If 42 voting members were involved, then a majority of 22. was
required for passage of the motion, and therefore the motion failed.
Note 2
From Jim Schoening to Lyle Smith - September 14, 2001
Lyle,
Please acknowledge receipt of this message.
Regarding your response on the 'majority' issue, I have no doubt you
talked to Mr. Herz and Mr. Dwyer, but did they actually concur with your
ruling, and was this verbally or in writing/email. I have written to them
but have not received a response. Did anyone from the Standards Department
concur. I'd like to talk to them also.
From Lyle Smith to Jim Schoening - September 14, 2001
Jim,
Of course they did. We discussed and agreed on the responses to all
questions raised by you and Mr. Spillers. All this was also reviewed by
the Standards Staff who also agreed. That is why it took so long. I wanted
all appropriate people to review and comment. I know you contacted them
directly and they will answer the same way.
-------- Original Message --------
Bob,
From the Dorsey and Whitney opinion that the IEEE-SA BoG "concurs with
and reaffirms"
Specifically, we understand that 42 e-mail ballots were received
including 9 abstentions, 17 affirmative votes and 16 negative votes. Mr.
Smith advised Messrs. Spillers and Schoening that the motion failed because the affirmative
votes did not constitute a majority (i.e., 22) of the total number of
the ballots cast.
The formula above, as described in the legal opinion, and refered to
by the IEEE-SA BoG, is exactly what we followed in this latest ballot.
Jim Schoening