[pp.int.general] Minutes of PPI GA 2013

[Antonio Garcia]

How conveniently formulated to be populistic and draw adhesion to your ad hominem argument :( .

"Voting on them", as already said, refers to the whole election procedure as one single activity to participate in. The count of all the member parties participating at that single place and moment as had been conveniently announced to all that the election would take place (a for too many far and inaccessible Kazan, with a shitty last-minute effort to save it from disaster by the unannounced and ad-hoc organising of a very improvised remote hub in Brussels where finally more than half of all delegates shared a still to be improvised and untested remote connection that failed miserably to provide the minimum comfort necessary) is 16, as evidenced counting the columns in the published minutes.

Thus, the votes needed to obtain +50% approval, standard votes or however anyone wants to name them is... not less than 9.

That is why the results given in the minutes are what they are, with no one obtaining less than 9 votes declared elected.

16 delegates were present or represented at the time of voting, and abstentions, no matter what interpretation you may wish to dream of them... do not count.

That is to say... neither does count the abstention of those present that choose not to vote YES or NO for any one given candidate, be it by raising their hands when the organisers asked who would abstain (a CAST abstention vote), or by simply not reacting when the votes for a certain candidate were called (a non-CAST abstention vote), nor of course the "abstention" of anyone not bothering to be present at the election process.

That is to mean, that the election threshold was "9 votes", emanating from the fact that 16 were present or represented to vote at the right moment of truth.

Independent of the fact that not all of the present cast but a YES or NO vote for each and every one of the candidates...

12 yes, 2 no, 2 abstentions
12 yes, and nothing else expressed

are equivalent results with positive election for the candidate, as 12 >= 9.

5 yes, 11 no, 0 abstentions
5 yes, 0 no, 11 abstentions
5 yes, and nothing else expressed

are equivalent results with negative election for the candidate, as 5 < 9

That this was the sole intended meaning, can also be inferred from the remark in the minutes where it is said that, in the event of a tie in YES votes no secondary ranking of NO votes and abstentions will be used, but a second election with only one YES or NO vote per participating delegate will need to be organized.


But of course, if logic and ethic may be damned when inconvenient...


... then he who shouts the loudest claiming to have the majority on his side may do as he wishes.

He will soon experience that majority to be very unstable and fragile... like the whole movement and each of the individual pirate parties are at the moment.


Please all, watch "Idiocracy" at least once, and look in a mirror.


Idiocracies spray crops with Gatorade... and Pirates seem to be willing to go the same route.
 


Antonio.



Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 10:55:47 +0100
From: nuno.cardoso at pp-international.net
To: pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
Subject: Re: [pp.int.general] Minutes of PPI GA 2013

Zbigniew is correct.

There is a difference between Abstentions and Blank votes. In PPI we can't vote Blank, we vote either Yes or No or Abstain from voting, in which case it doesn't get taken into account, which is exactly what the RoP for the GA stated:

"6 c) The candidates that has achieved a simple majority of the "yes" votes from Ordinary Members present or represented and voting on them[18] are elected in the order determined by number of "yes" votes accumulated. Abstentions are not taken into account. In event of a tie where order matters, deciding elections are held, where only one "yes" vote per Ordinary Member can be cast."

When saying that "Abstentions are not taken into account" it refers to the whole previous sentence, so for the "simple majority of the "yes" votes from Ordinary Members present or represented AND voting on them" the "Abstentions are not taken into account", because even if they are "Ordinary Members present or represented" there is that extra "AND voting on them" for which "Abstentions are not taken into account". If Abstentions were taken into account then there would be no need for that condition as it would be impossible not to be "voting on them" by default.

Even if that wasn't clear enough (with Abstentions "taken into account" as "ballots cast") and we were to discuss what a "simple majority" is, we would still probably go with the definition as it is used on most of the world (except for the USA and Canada) which means "Plurality, a voting requirement of more ballots cast for a proposition than for any other option", instead of "Majority, a voting requirement of more than half of all ballots cast"

Anyway, I think this is so crystal clear that all the 5 confirmed CoA members will welcome the 2 others unless, like some loud voices here seem to, they have a personal grudge or hidden agenda against those 2 individuals or PPI as a whole.

Pirate regards,
Nuno Cardoso

On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 6:44 AM, Zbigniew Łukasiak <zzbbyy at gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 5:37 AM, Antonio Garcia <ningunotro at hotmail.com> wrote:


> It feels like it is useless to argue.

>

> The abstentions that do not count towards the vote for the election of the

> members of the CoA are those of the members of the PPI that did not care to

> show up to participate, be it sending a delegate or having delegated their

> vote to someone present. This is, if PPI had 50 members with voting rights

> then 50% approval would need 26 votes, unless abstentions did not count and

> only the 16 represented at the exact time and place the voting was organized

> were taken into account.



The wikipedia definition of abstention in parliamentary procedure (and

I believe this was one) states that it is about delegates that are

present but not voting:



Abstention is a term in election procedure for when a participant in a

vote either does not go to vote (on election day) or, in parliamentary

procedure, is present during the vote, but does not cast a ballot.

Abstention must be contrasted with "blank vote", in which a voter

casts a ballot willfully made invalid by marking it wrongly or by not

marking anything at all.





>

> Then, the candidates have to achieve a simple majority of "yes" votes from

> the members present and voting. All of them have to obtain at least 9 votes,

> which is the simple majority of the 16 present. Abstentions do not count...

> in the sense that if only 10 cast votes on one specific candidate... the six

> remaining are not subtracted... he still has to achieve 9 yes votes to be

> in.



I don't know any procedure where there was some subtracting of votes -

so this interpretation sound suspicious to me.  I think the only

reasonable interpretation is that the abstention don't count towards

the total number of votes as in the 'simple majority' requirement.







--

Zbigniew Lukasiak

http://brudnopis.blogspot.com/

http://perlalchemy.blogspot.com/

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