Constructive abstention

Proposal:

An abstention shall not count towards the determination of any threshold required in an election, referendum, legislative vote, or any other democratic vote.

Intent:

To prevent a situation in which a single person blocks all other people from making progress in answering questions through a democratic vote.

Discussion:

In a democracy, when there is a question to be decided by the eligible voters, the answer is determined through the use of a voting method.

When a specific threshold is required such as unanimity, super-majority, simple majority, or any other threshold, if all eligible voters are considered when determining the threshold rather than all participating voters, it can create a situation where it’s not possible for the question to be answered because there aren’t enough participating voters to meet the threshold.

This is most obvious when unanimity is required of all eligible voters even if they do not all participate in the vote. If even one person abstains or doesn’t show up, the vote will fail. In this situation, any person would have veto power over the rest of the voters by abstaining and be able to block progress or extort the majority for some benefit in exchange for a vote. This is undemocratic.

To prevent such situations, any person who abstains from participating in an election is not counted towards the determination of any threshold. This is called constructive abstention because it allows people to demonstrate their lack of support for a topic without blocking progress.

The concept of abstention includes not showing up for the vote at all, or submitting a blank voting card, or saying anything other than one of the available choices.

A process in which the eligible participants are named and which requires the unanimous vote of all eligible participants and in which any participant can block approval by abstaining, is not a democratic process, it is a bureaucratic approval process which requires the approval of a specific set of people.