Resolving negative votes that aren't withdrawn

Status

Submitted

Date Submitted

10/10/2007

Submitted By

Mike Davis

Transferred to

McCay/Quinn

Issue

RBAC has four negative voters, all from FOX Systems, who will not withdraw their negative votes. Without withdrawal, the committee is 1 vote away from the needed affirmative vote quorum. Can this committee resolve this ballot using POL 15.09.04 (Recirculation of Unresolved Negative Comments) in which the unresolved negatives are reported back to the members of the original consensus pool who cast a negative or affirmative vote, allowing them the opportunity to change or reaffirm their vote. If the resulting tally is still the same (4 negatives and one shy of the 90%) what happens? See Bylaws 15.07.02, which seems to be out of synch with our procedures.

Recommended Resolution

Why this was brought to the TSC: This issue was referred to the TSC because the bylaw 15.07.02 (Technical Committee Report on Negative Response Actions) and the currenht P&P are out of synch. According to the bylaws, negative votes declared not related or not persuasive by the technical committee during the resolution process must be re-circulated to the consensus group for confirmation (by 2/3s vote) of the not related or not persuasive disposition. Once this happens, the negative ballots are considered unsubstantiated and shall not impede progress of the ballot. The policy regarding how this confirmation ballot is performed was removed after the ANSI audit as being unnecessary. ANSI indicated that what we really need to do is re-circulation of the unresolved negative votes, and we added POL 15.09.04 (Re-circulation of Unresolved Negative comments). The program is that four balloters from the same company voted negative and unless one of those three negative voters changes their vote (unlikely), the ballot will not have reached the 90% affirmative and there is no statement in this POL regarding considering these unsubstantiated negative votes that will not impeded the progress of the ballot. Recommendation: If the TC finds the votes not related, I would recommend that we do a reconfirmation vote as outlined in bylaws 15.07.02 and then they are considered unsubstantiated negatives and don't impede the progress of the ballot. If the committee finds the votes not persuasive, I think they are stuck as 90% of the combined affirmatives and negatives would ot be affirmative as is required by our bylaws.