[vote] Update OpenWrt rules

[David Woodhouse]

On Mon, 2025-10-27 at 21:41 +0000, Imre Kaloz wrote:
> 
> NACK. Counting neutrals as half-approvals goes against logic and
> morality as much as if we would do the opposite. With penalizing the
> abstaining, which is another valid form of neutrality, it's diluting
> opposition, not to mention it could disproportionately sway outcomes.

I don't see your logic.

You can make an argument about the morality of making assumptions about
*absent* voters who do not vote at all. But in the case of an active
neutral vote, that is a choice that the individual makes at the time of
the vote, in the full knowledge of how it will be interpreted. How
could it be immoral to interpret their vote in precisely the way that
we have agreed in advance?

The idea is that a neutral vote counts towards the quorum — that person
has *seen* and acknowledged the vote, and has not voted against the
motion. It shouldn't be counted towards the actual yes/no decision, and
I pointed out the error in the mathematics there.

But as Rich points out, we should proceed with this rule change and
then we can tweak that afterwards, as getting quorum under the existing
rules is too difficult (which is why they need changing in the first
place).




> As a basic example, if 10 people vote, 4 for, 2 against and 4
> neutral, although the vote would fail, a reintroduction of the same
> question with the claim that "it got majority support, just not
> enough voters" 

The statement that "it got majority support" would be true. The voters
who cast a neutral vote, after seeing 4 "yes" and 2 "no" votes, would
have done so deliberately, knowing that the motion had majority support
and that their vote does not change that.

The idea is to have three active vote possibilities: "yes", "no", and
"whatever". And it's important to allow for the latter when we also
want to ensure that we have a sufficient quorum for decisions, and set
it apart from simply failing to vote.

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