A Brazilian BRM delegate reported
When we reached Wednesday, we were presented four options of “destination” to the other answers (ie 81.6% of the total). They were only four options and one of them must be chosen (at that moment I’ve remembered the movie “Sofia’s Choice”):
1 - All rejected.
2 - All approved.
3 - The ITTF decides everything.
4 - Decision by vote in batch, with the possibility of declaration of each individual response vote and / or the definition of a overall vote, as “accepted everything”. (…and Mr. Barta, please note that I’m not using the “default vote” expression here, ok).
Of course, the option was the least ridiculous was option 4 and that’s why it was adopted (in the final document, page 5 there is a copy of the ballot to vote). Much has been discussed on the possibility that some NBs should cast blocking votes (as vote “Approve to all” to force the approval or “disapprove to all” to force the disapproval), but nothing could be done about it…
What a classic! Four choices with only one acceptable.
At that moment, there was a very interesting protest of a delegation which said that they didn’t went Switzerland to vote, which could be done from home (they were there to discuss) and the answer: “Patience…”.
Another NB protested saying that they only received the document containing the answers to their own questions and didn’t even had the opportunity to read and discuss the whole responses document (1027 responses on a 2500+ document). For this reason the option “We do not wish to record any position” was created on the ballot. That highlighted problem also happened on other NBs and there are NBs that simply voted on proposals that they never even read! (This is really cool, right?).
A rule was made that any decision taken at the meeting overwrites the decision taken by “the ballot” vote (ie a decision by “the floor” has greater weight).
At the end of the week, the votes were delivered and the final result (which I also reserve the right not to comment or disclose), the vast majority of the proposals were approved (most by a few votes of “approval by default”…).
I’ve write this post just to assure that there is a public explanation to the 98% approval that some companies are using worldwide.
See now how the 98% now doesn’t mean anything? And the 18.4%… this really need to be discussed (and explained by someone).
If I recall it right some BRM members explicitly asked not to use the 98% figure.