[Tagging] Clarify explicit abstention when voting on a proposal

[Markus]

On Thu, 27 Feb 2020 at 20:29, Paul Allen <pla16021 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Wikipedia is not noted for its consistency.  From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstention
>
> Abstentions do not count in tallying the vote negatively or positively; when members abstain, they are in effect attending only to contribute to a quorum. White votes, however, may be counted in the total of votes, depending on the legislation.
>
> Note that abstentions can only contribute to a quorum in things like parliamentary
> votes where people are required to attend.  As far as ordinary voters in elections
> go, there may be no requirement to attend or vote (depending on legislation) and
> no quorum.

I've just realised that i mixed up quorum (minimum number of votes for
a vote to be valid) and number of votes for calculating the majority.
While abstentions and invalid votes do contribute to the quorum (if
one exist), they usually aren't counted when calculating the majority.
At least this is the situation in Switzerland. Example [1]:

Distributed ballots: 244
Received ballots: 244
Empty: 25
Invalid: 1
Valid: 218
Absolute majority: 110

[1]: https://www.parlament.ch/de/über-das-parlament/archiv/wahlen-im-rueckblick/bundesratswahlen/2019-12-11

Please excuse the confusion.

Regards


Markus