First, the following line from the Small Commonwealth Ongoing recWar League Treaty:
Many of our treaties have lines similar to this one - I chose it specifically because it was the treaty that I is a current discussion topic.8. This treaty may be modified by the agreement of 3/4s of signatory nations.
My question on this is: does the Court see this line as requiring 3/4 of ALL signatory nations in agreement for a modification to pass, or just 3/4 of the votes from signatory nations that bother to show up and vote? Or, said another way, if a nation doesn't vote at all, is it counted against the quota of agreement?
Next, on to abstain votes. All of our charters are silent on what proper voting procedure is, which has worked well enough until now, but it does leave room for doubt that perhaps the Court can shed some light on.
I have always viewed an abstain vote as the vote assigned to a party that doesn't issue an actual vote, and to actually enter an abstain vote is the political equivalent of saying "I see this and I am not going to vote on it, and I thought saying so in this way would be nicer than just ignoring the voting process and not voting at all." However, in several micronational governments in the past, based on the way quotas based on active populations were set up, an abstain vote was a functional nay vote, in the sense proposals needed a certain quota of active citizens approving to pass, and not voting or issuing the abstain vote was the equivalent of voting against it since the procedures only counted votes in approval vs. any sort of vote not in approval, including not voting at all.
What is the Court's stance on this, and how does this stance interact with the first question, above?