[cabfpub] [EXTERNAL]Re: ]RE: Ballot 194 - Effective Date of Ballot 193 Provisions is in the VOTING period (ends April 16)

[Gervase Markham]

On 17/04/17 02:40, Kirk Hall via Public wrote:
> List”.  It’s vote was submitted “to the Public Mail List”.  To be hyper
> technical, the Bylaw does not say the vote must APPEAR on the list
> during the voting period (just that the vote must occur), and any number
> of things can prevent a message to the Public list from being forwarded
> – I have had my messages trapped or even disappear before.

If Gordon had not CCed you on his email, no-one would know about
Microsoft's vote attempt, and this issue would not have arisen. If MS
had then later said "oh, but we tried to vote", you would doubtless have
said "sorry, it's too late". You have certainly done this on previous
occasions, ruling out of court votes that hit the Public Mailing List
after the deadline.

And If I had been the one CCed (if, for example, he had hit Reply to my
vote email to generate his own, as people sometimes do), and _I_ had
later said "Oh, I got a copy of Microsoft's vote, here it is", I'm also
fairly sure you would have ruled it as invalid. Just because Gervase
Markham got a copy makes no difference. The vote didn't end up in the
right place.

But the chair is no different from an ordinary member in this respect -
he does not have the power to vote on behalf of a member. Just because
he happens to be the person counting the votes doesn't mean votes sent
only to him are different to votes sent only to another member such as me.

I can understand that you might not have realised that Microsoft's vote
came only to you, and that the original tabulation of votes was a
genuine mistake. That's not a problem; it's an unusual situation. But
the fix is not to stick to your guns, the fix is to re-tabulate the
votes which were validly posted.

I realise this is irritating, and I realise that a re-vote may well
result in the motion passing, but it is not a good precedent for the
chair to be able to rule that irregular votes are valid, particularly
when they make the difference between pass and fail.

Gerv