(BTW, I am sorry that people were offended by the comment, which seems to have struck a nerve. I was mainly lashing out after reading a bunch of comments that bothered me, but I don't feel like I could honestly take it back, because it was what I was feeling at the time.)

(Which is about as much as you'll be able to get out of me, and if it's not enough, I'm sorry for that, too, but I don't feel like being dishonest about this particular issue.)

I'm for "closing discussion" when voting's going on, meaning no long discussions of methods of this or that, but it would be nice to have some place to ask questions and get terse answers.

I think people should raise "point of information" type stuff in Bureau during the "no-discussion" period, if we have one.

And campaigning could be stamped out in the same way that natter is now..?

And, I may have had a couple of glasses of celebratory wine, but it seems like Kat's post was directed at Jessica, but PMM's the one taking offense/replying?

I'm confused.

I was the one, for the record, who said "were you one of the ones wanting a movie thread?" to Jessica. I don't even know why, except that I knew the movie thread business had attracted attention as an example of not-real consensus, and I think of Jessica as a Movies sort of person, was guessing randomly that this might be why she was upset. I apologise if that's caused further upset or confusion.

Ignore me.

And, I may have had a couple of glasses of celebratory wine, but it seems like Kat's post was directed at Jessica, but PMM's the one taking offense/replying?

No, multiple issues addressed in the post.

Best to just forget about it, really.

Yes, this is easy to do. For this form, I'm going to work it like the first one where you have to vote on every question (unless folks have objections, I'd rather do it this way to prevent voting errors -- I don't want any virtual chads). Going forward, since there will likely be just one question on each ballot, it makes no sense to allow someone to leave it blank. If you want to leave it blank, then don't vote.

Should we make the options for each something like

1)  yes
2)  no
3)  No preference - (count me towards your freaking minimum vote total)
4)  I'm blinvisible (don't count me towards the minimum vote total)

In the future, on single question ballots, we'd only need the three, because if people with feel answer 4 most represents them, they shouldn't vote. Yes?

I think what's easiest is just using No Preference, and counting it towards the MVT. An option where people vote but aren't counted seems wrong to me.

In the future, on single question ballots, we'd only need the three, because if people with feel answer 4 most represents them, they shouldn't vote.

Please, no. People who don't have a preference shouldn't vote and shouldn't count toward the total. We should have a no preference option on multi-issue ballots, for cases where you don't want to vote on some subset of the questions, but then your vote on that particular question shouldn't count as a vote.

A vote is a preference. Not voting is, well, not voting. And shouldn't count as a vote.

(Okay, yeah, I'm still pissed off at my Honorable Senator for that "present" vote yesterday. But it's a closely related issue.)

If I read Jon correctly, the ballot that has multiple votes forces you to vote on each option. So I think for this ballot at least, we have to have some sort of option for people to skip the question.

I am heavily for no "no preferance" voting, but that is what we are voting on in this ballot, right?

Also, I hear what Java Cat (and others are saying). It is hard to read through this thread to make an informed vote. Should some people outline the arguments for and against certain propositions in a post that people can get to easily?

I think we have tried to be really neutral in the wording of the ballot, but someone just reading the ballot might not have heard the reasons for things. And we make it rather hard to get to.

I don't see this as something we would need to continue in the future, just something that would see us through this time.

(Okay, yeah, I'm still pissed off at my Honorable Senator for that "present" vote yesterday. But it's a closely related issue.)

Har. I know that's a big part of why I suddenly found myself being anti-no preference myself.