[LINK] Australia abstains on Office Open XML vote

[Janet Hawtin]

On 9/4/07, Kim Holburn <kim.holburn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2007/Sep/03, at 10:42 PM, Andy Farkas wrote:
>
> > On 9/3/07, Kim Holburn <kim.holburn at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>> an abstention is the next best thing to a "yes,"
> >
> > In order to vote "no", they actually had to vote "no, with comments" -
> > comments that say what needs to be changed in order to make it
> > acceptable.
>
> Not true, "unconditional no" is also an option.

yes
abstain
no with comments - no being - we will say yes if you fix the comments.
are the only valid votes as far as I have heard.

I do not think there has been a situation previously where the
proposal was so bad that it was obvious that there was a problem with
the surrounding processes.

ISO and Standards Australia need to have a means to negotiate when the
whole process is at odds with any value they offer. Perhaps abstention
is where that starts. I cannot tell.
I am sure there are folks here who were on the voting committee who
would have a better idea of what is possible.

It is very hard to see how to be more effective/ less apathetic.

Janet