Congratulations and thanks to my friends in Montana. My old presbytery, Yellowstone, voted in favor of Amendment A 25-23 with two abstentions. I was nervous over this one as I knew it was going to be close.
The difference between "A" passing or failing nationwide could depend on one or two votes in one presbytery. Also, voting today are West Virginia and North Central Iowa. We are hoping for West Virginia to hold and a long shot hope for North Central Iowa to flip.
Thanks again, Yellowstone!!
Here is the vote chart. MLP counts it so far as 56-40!
Two years ago in the Presbytery of Arkansas they defined "majority" as "majority of all votes cast--including abstentions." This would place Yellowstone's vote as a dead heat, thus failing. Dear God, I pray this doesn't come down to one Presbytery yeah or nay, because those two non-votes/voters-who-could-not-decide would mean everything.
ReplyDeleteThen again, I pray for a clear majority yeah or nay. I'm praying for a clear decision not a wishy-washy one.
That's my opinion, as they said in car commercials in the 70's, your mileage may vary.
No, this is a definite win. An abstention is an abstention, not a no. It is as if the person did not vote. We were lucky to get it in Yellowstone this year!
ReplyDeleteIt's sometimes difficult to know how many people actually abstained. Sometimes they don't respond at all.
ReplyDeleteIn the North Alabama voting this year, we voted on the amendments (other than 10-A) by raising hands. We called for yes, no, and abstention. When we tallied those up each amendment got almost, but not exactly (+-1) the same number of commissioners voting. When it came to the written ballot of 10-A, there were more than five additional votes cast, and we ensured that only eligible voters got ballots.
West Virginia holds YES 93-56
ReplyDeleteNorth Central Iowa NO 43-50 (much improved)
A good day, esp. with Yellowstone!
Yep, a good day. The projection has been holding strong at 94 Yes on 10-A for that last 18 presbytery votes. Let's pray that holds up!
ReplyDeletehttp://home.comcast.net/~KattieW/Votes/
@Kattie, your name is in lights. I put your voting model on the side bar to give us inspiration!
ReplyDeleteScore is 57-42 or so.
ReplyDeleteThanks John.
ReplyDeleteTruth be told, I've always felt the projections were a little optimistic, but so far the presbyteries projected to flip actually did.
There's been another analysis done by GAJunkie. He appears to be concluding, by a rather convoluted argument, that trends can't be identified and exploited. Obviously I disagree. I used this model to project the outcome of 08-B, and it worked rather well.
If pressed to make an actual prediction as to the final outcome, I would be conservative and say that I believe the total number of Yes votes would be somewhere between 86 and 91. The bad news here is that 86 is not enough to pass.
Those who look at my model should keep that in mind and continue to work hard for passage.
1. What does Robert's Rules say about abstentions?
ReplyDelete2. Philadelphia was a yes in 2009 but very close. It's a toss up this year.
3. Best prediction? It will pass.
We can make a lot of predictions, but as the cliche reminds us:
ReplyDelete"That's why we play the game."
We can take no presbytery for granted.
No equality-minded person can care miss this vote!
As to abstentions the "usual situation" applies. They talked about this very thing at Yellowstone and ruled that the amendment passed.
Only at the presbytery level when 87 are required to pass does an abstention count effectively as a "no".
@Robert are you Bob Campbell?
ReplyDeleteJohn Yes I am Bob Campbell. I've use a different email address on a regular basis and haven't been changing to get Pastor Bob to come up.
ReplyDelete