By-laws voting definitions

[Dan Smith]

On May 31, 2011, at 2:34 PM, mark.reinhold at oracle.com wrote:

> A Two-Thirds Majority does allow for more voters to object but at the
> same time it requires many more voters explicitly to approve, so in terms
> of overall effort it's "harder".

Sounds like you're describing an _absolute_ two-thirds majority.  Where nobody objects, a standard two-thirds majority only requires 3 approvals.  That's not "many more" explicit approvals.  And a _three-vote_ consensus is strictly more difficult than a (standard) two-thirds majority: both require three yeses, but the three-vote consensus allows no nos (for example, in a group of 100, a 3-1 or 4-2 vote passes two-thirds majority but not three-vote consensus).

(Just noticed when working out specific numbers: simple majority uses '>' ("more of"), while two-thirds majority uses '>=' ("at least").  That distinction may be significant among small groups; might be good to be more explicit about it.)

—Dan