In order to avoid future confusion on what abstaining in a vote means, I propose to post explicitly this procedural rule:

When a decision is to be made, every member must get all the information about an issue, and be informed that a vote will be held well in advance. Everybody is expected to participate in all the deliberations and in the vote. A member may choose not to participate at all in a vote (and the preceding deliberations). This will be deemed that (s)he abstained in this particular vote. It will be treated the same as abstaining explicitly (but choosing "No Opinion" option). By abstaining either way, this member states that (s)he leaves the decision in this matter to others who are participating in the vote, and that when a decision is made, (s)he will accept the decision made by others and not object to its implementation.

A majority will always be counted with respect to the total number of votes casts minus all explicit abstentions (because all abstentions mean delegating the decision to all those voting YES or NO).

mk, [democracy.mkolar.org]