Voting within the Working Group is restricted to that which is the minimum and essential. Excluding IEEE balloting, which requires IEEE membership, there are basically two flavors of voting within the SSSWG.
Most of the voting within the SSSWG is at meetings and is the simple determination of consensus through the show of hands. No special eligibility is required.
The second, formal flavor of voting, which will be described, is employed in cases such as these:
When there is a significant issue for which consensus is not readily attainable.
When the SSSWG submits material to the IEEE for formal balloting.
When the SSSWG publishes a draft or final version of the Reference Model or similar article.
NOTES:
These are examples, and this is not an exclusive list.
Working drafts, papers, and similar articles are publishable as such without the application of formal voting procedures, but consensus is still required.
Generally, when a document is released by the Working Group as a whole, and carries the stamp of approval of the Group, it will have been voted on and approved formally by the eligible voters of the Group.
TIMING. Meetings are held every other month. Material informing the voter of the subject of the vote will be available to the voter 30 days in advance of the conclusion of the vote. That is, the voter will have a full 30 days to examine the material and decide before the voting period terminates. AND the voting period will terminate during a meeting.
ELIGIBILITY. An interested party needs to have attended two of the six meetings previous to the meeting at which voting concludes to be eligible to vote.
RECAP. Voting concludes during the process of a bimonthly meeting after informative material has been available to eligible and potentially eligible voters for 30 days.
COUNTING VOTES. In counting votes, non-responses and abstentions are ignored. But half of the voters who were eligible at the conclusion of the vote must have responded affirmatively or negatively in order for the vote to be valid. If the count of affirmative votes is greater than the count of negative votes, then the subject on which the vote is taken is approved.
VOTER RESPONSIBILITY. Negative votes must be accompanied by a rationale for the vote.
COMMUNICATION TO VOTERS. The SSSWG will make information available to voters through any ordinary means, including hardcopy delivery, fax, email, web pages, etc, or through a combination of methods with verification that the voter received or could have received the information.
COMMUNICATION OF VOTES TO THE SSSWG. Voters may use any ordinary means to communicate a vote or abstention to one of the contacts within SSSWG. Included are hardcopy delivery (e.g.,USPS), email, fax, etc.