Re: [gnso-osc-ops] RE: GNSO Council Operations Work Team Conference Details / 30 September at 1600 UTC

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ray,

I've a concern about abstentions being counted as votes against. Where a 
person with standing to vote is aware of a conflict, and Bruce has 
always been a good example of that, and the issue is known to be close, 
the assignment of the non-vote to a position, affirmative or negative, 
on the issue, makes acting on that possibly private knowledge of 
conflict less likely, as the act of abstention may have dispositive 
outcome rather than no outcome.
Suppose there are 15 persons with standing to vote, and the issue before 
them is "shall 8 of you benefit by this vote", and all 8 abstain. The 
outcome must, under the "abstention == no" rule, be that the issue fails 
to attract 8 "yes" votes. A 7 to 0 vote becomes a 7 to 8 result.
Eric