Abstain - the use of Abstain should depend on the poll and the creator of the poll.
-- Ravensfire
Dangerous words from someone running for Chief Justice my friend. What's to stop me from posting a poll saying:
Should be attack Ceasar?
Yes (for the purposes of this poll yes will be counted as no)
No
Other - please post what other means to you (for the purposes of this poll other will be counted as no)
Abstain (for the purposes of this poll abstain will not be counted)
Ludicrous and extreme but shows up the danger in allowing pollsters to define thier own interpretation of poll results. Not really that difficult to manipulate polls if you can tell how they are to be interpreted. Nor is it difficult to arrange a plurality through options given in a poll. We should all use abstain the same way.
The poll is indicating the very same, Shattered. I really hope the final result of the poll will be honoured.
I'll live by any result as long as it is a
majority result. By majority I mean a final vote percentage as given by the forum poll results that is over 50%.
Well I'm sorry donsig that I lost your vote, but I didn't think opinions on this subject had to do anything with the elections. Oh well, I guess anything said by people running for office can be taken to heart.
For abstain to function correctly, the poll would have to have a reason to have a indecisive choice. I STILL dont see the point of counting abstain in the actual vote tally, whether for plurality or majority decision. In a plurality decision it wouldn't make much of a difference, but in a majority decision, it could make or break the vote. That does nothing but add more bureaucracy and red tape to a functioning system, causing inefficiency and wasting of time. From what I've noticed, most of the citizens at least feel that abstain slows down progress and isn't worth the hassle to continue counting it toward the total vote tally.
Well, I did vote for you for DP.
The reason for the current debate about counting or not counting abstain is my feeling that we should only consider a poll to be binding if an option rec'd a majority not a plurality. If no majority decision is reached I say we let our officials make the decision. This gives citizens the chance to make decisions but also lets officials have some real power in cases where no majority decision is made. Having a built in way for citizens to declare a poll invalid via their votes (either through counting abstain or some other mandatory option) does not
add more bureaucracy and red tape it actually streamlines the system by allowing officials to make decisions where bad polls exist - and bad polls are deemed bad by actual citizen votes and not by some all powerful Censor type official or moderator.
I'm still in favor of having someone look at the poll and deciding if it is bogus or real. If it's bogus, it can just be closed and a real poll opened in its place.
That's one option but after the censorial shenanigans of last game you'll have a very difficult time convincing me to support this idea.
Assuming the poll is real, then the highest number of votes for a real option should prevail unless stated otherwise by the originator.
We'll have one of these soon. Where to settle city number two is always a multi-option poll - exactly the kind that result in pluralities. Don't you see yet that plurality decisions cause alot of dissention in the democracy game? Just what is it that you have against majority decisions?
It is valid for "none of the above" to be a real option in a real poll. If it wins the poll, then we don't do anything.
We agree here. Too bad we can't agree on how to decide whether a poll is real or not.
It should not be mandatory to include either abstain or "none of the above".
I can live with or without abstain but I prefer none of the above to a Censor going around willy-nilly invalidating perfectly good polls for political reasons.
The problem with the abstain option is that it's essentially vestigial in nature - it was originally implemented when we decided to impose a strict quorum requirement (if I recall correctly - it have been an awfully long time..). That is, after all, the purpose of the abstain vote in real-world legislatures (the equivalent of voting 'present' in most American legislatures, including the U.S. Congress) - you don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but want your voted counted for the sake achieving a quorum so the body can move on to other business.
We can reimplement a quorum, and define abstain as counting toward the quorum but not in favor of any particular option (an option that might, incidentally, solve our problem of judging if a poll is valid - if you think a poll is invalid, just don't vote in it).
We can define abstain as a vote against the poll (as AljayBoy states above), as well.
However we go, I think a new initiative on polling should probably be decided in the near future, before our civilization starts expanding extensively.
As for this poll, I'll do the unthinkable and abstain. We either need to define an abstention carefully, or we need to abandon it altogether.
Wise words Octavian X. Didn't realize abstain originated to deal with quorums. I never did like those. Your post makes a heck of a lot of sense.
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