board77

So after all that, it misses the Q by 4 votes?
I guess not enough folk care about the issue to worry about it, hence 'A' wins by default.

I'll make the changes to the title, but I don't know how to put up a link to a specific post. Can someone PM me because I'll be locking this thread as well, but I'll leave it up as a global announcement for the time being.

Not so fast folks!

First off, I went back and checked the global email that was sent out notifying members of this vote. It clearly stated the cutoff time as 6:00 PM GMT.

There have been a few votes that have come in over the last few hours. The total votes received now stands at 41. Six of those were sent in after the 18:00 cutoff time, putting the current official total at 35 votes. There is still an off chance that additional ballots were sent in that have not been counted. Alatar and I both received ballots in our personal mailbox. Of the other Rangers, Areanor and Rowanberry have been absent for several days. Rowan is supposed to be back tomorrow, but I’m not sure about Areanor. It is possible that they have ballots that have not been counted. The official tally cannot be announced until they check in.

In a totally unrelated aside - the occurrence of the b77 m77t in Florida, home of delayed and buggered-up vote counts, is entirely coincidental.

Of the 35 official votes counted so far, the winning option was “A”. The count went as follows:
51% of 35 = 17.85, therefore 18 votes needed to win.
First count:
A - 13
B - 4
C - 4
D - 14

Second count (after eliminating the B & C first choices):
A - 18
D - 16
(one ballot had C as the first choice, with no other options ranked)
Option “A” would win.

Including the six late votes the tally becomes:
%1% of 41 = 20.91, therefore 21 votes needed to win.
First count:
A - 16
B - 5
C - 4
D - 16

Second count (after eliminating the C first choices)
A - 16
B - 7
D - 17

Third count after eliminating the B first or second choices)
A - 22
D - 18
Option “A” would win.

The tally vote Question 2:

Of the 35 official votes:
A - 5
B - 29
(one ballot did not contain a vote for question 2)

Including the six late votes:
A - 7
B - 33

B would win.

These tallies are, however, not binding since the official count did not meet the quorum. We must await hearing from Rowanberry and Areanor before announcing the official results.

Edit - Areanor is here now. I have PMed her to ask about the ballots.

Edit again - just heard back from Areanor. She did not receive any ballots herself. That just leaves Rowanberry.

Good point about Rowan possibly having ballots in her mailbox. So, I guess I was hasty to lock this thread...

Tinwe, thank you for taking such care with this.

I cross-posted with Fisssh earlier and did not see his comment that people might have thought they had until midnight.

It is true that we have never before ended a vote in the early afternoon (U.S. time) and it troubles me that votes were received today but not in time for the cutoff, even if the PM did specify the GMT time. (This is one of the reasons Idylle wanted a routine voting cycle built into the Charter, so that everyone's expectation would be the same.)

I am inclined to accept all votes received today, at least until midnight GMT because that is our routine voting protocol, but I would like to hear from another Loremaster on this one.

And I would like to hear from Faramond because he has traditionally been the keeper of the letter of the law.

Jn

I believe that all the votes cast today should be counted.

I would think that as well. I had assumed that we had at least until midnight GMT.

It is almost an hour past midnight GMT now ....

Tinwe, had all those votes come in by 8:00 pm EST? (Once it gets later than that it's no longer 8/22 in Europe, which is why I don't think it's quite proper to go beyond 8:00 pm EST)

We do still have to wait to see whether there are PM's in Rowanberry's mailbox.

I have selfish reasons, as I said earlier, for wanting the the quorum to have been met and I'm relieved that the actual result is not affected. (I don't consider the disclaimer statement to be of particular importance in this issue.)

Jn

The last two votes were received at 8:37 and 9:43 PM, GMT, so yes they were received well before midnight GMT, and before 8:00 PM EDST.

Thanks, Tinwe.

Jn

So, what's going to happen? Do those votes that came in before GMT midnight count or not?

Eru,

I think they should and Voronwe thinks they should, but I want to give a chance for other voices to be heard in case there are objections.

If there are no objections, I'll add to the committee handbook that votes should run until midnight GMT on the day that they end.

Jn

Jnyusa wrote:

If there are no objections, I'll add to the committee handbook that votes should run until midnight GMT on the day that they end.

That's just what I was going to suggest.

So, basically all votes that came in before midnight GMT will count? The only objection of mine is that Ax stated the time that the vote was going to end, so it really isn't a huge surprise, though I admit that when I posted my post about this being the last day it was after the time technically ended, and even I wasn't aware of it. So, I agree with letting the vote extend to midnight only because I think we all made the same mistake since this is our first binding vote as an open board.

I’ll temporarily change the thread title again, until we hear back from Rowanberry.

I think that at some point another Ranger or two should verify my counting before the results are certified, if we do decide to count all of the votes, that is.

Also, since I’m one the people doing the counting I don’t think I should say whether the late votes should be counted or not.

But I do think they should. Ah crap, I said it, didn’t I?

Tinwe, yeah we've got to wait for Rowanberry, and I think it is the responsibility of the committee to confirm the vote count.

I didn't give any thought to how that should happen, but the raw ballots (with names removed?) should probably be emailed to one other person, Ax maybe, to confirm that they match the count, and then the IRV should be replicated.

Don't know when Ax gets back from the moot but we should probably wait for both him and Rowanb.

Jn

Tinwe, I don't see how counting the votes should in any way preempt you from expressing an opinion about whether the six votes should count.

I'll add my voice to this. I also think the votes should count. I personally assumed that the cutoff was 12:00 GMT and could quite easily have missed the cutoff.

I'll gladly do a recount if you would like the rangers to handle the count. There's no need to add any further complications.

Alatar

I'm the keeper of the letter of the law?

Really?

I have to admit I don't care what gets done.

I've been essentially gone from B77 for the past two weeks, sort of drifting away, as happens with message boards, and I am mildly ashamed to admit that I didn't even vote here, though to be honest about it I was completely burnt out on this issue.

I find it very strange that votes came in after the cutoff. So many, too! For some reason the cutoff was poorly understood this time.

As a matter of practical advice, I think in the future a cutoff that members will understand had better be chosen and strictly followed, because the worst thing that could happen is for a vote to be going one way before the cutoff and the other way after the cutoff. Can you imagine the sort of firestorm that could erupt from that sort of situation?

Faramond wrote:

because the worst thing that could happen is for a vote to be going one way before the cutoff and the other way after the cutoff. Can you imagine the sort of firestorm that could erupt from that sort of situation?

Yup, and it has happened before...I think that's why folks are a bit reluctant to decide anything here.