Ruling [QUESTION] Constitutional Amendment Majority Counting

[Chanku]

Under the 12th Mandate of Lazarus Amendments to the Mandate and other Constitutional Laws are governed by the following Article I, Sections 8 and 9. The text of which is quoted here:

(9) The Assembly may amend this Mandate by three-quarters vote.

(10) The Assembly may enact constitutional laws and resolutions, bearing the same legal weight as this Mandate, and may amend or repeal such constitutional laws and resolutions, by three-quarters vote. Constitutional laws and resolutions must be explicitly designated as such within the text of each constitutional law or resolution, and may not either explicitly or implicitly amend or repeal this Mandate or other constitutional laws or resolutions.

Given the vague nature of the text, should abstains be counted or not?

Furthermore, if abstains should not be counted, does that affect prior amendments?

 

[Eldarion]

This could be fairly easily answered IMO.

The last vote before this with an abstention: https://nslazarus.com/forum/index.php?threads/4013/

Shareholders of Lazarus,

With 10 Aye, 2 Nay, and 1 Abstain, the "Executive Council Amendment" has passed with 88.33% for and 11.67% against.

-- Debussy, Speaker

10 Ayes is 88.33% for. If an abstention was counted, then the margin could only be 77.92%.

The first mandate amendment to pass the assembly also never counted abstentions and thus passed with 100%: https://nslazarus.com/forum/index.php?threads/2510/

 

[Wang Yao]

The Court of Lazarus has unanimously agreed on the following rulings, authored by myself:

The Court rules that unless specified in legislation, abstention vote are not to be counted in the final result of a vote. As such only a three-quarters vote in favor, without counting abstention, is required regarding constitutional amendments, laws and resolutions voting as there are no explicit mention of counted abstention in Article I, Sections 9 and 10 of the Twelfth Mandate.

The Assembly Procedure Act allows for "Aye"/"For", "Nay"/"Against" and "Abstain"/"Present" votes to be casted, yet there is no mention in this act either of abstention vote being included in the counting for Assembly law-making votes. It is also to be noted that abstention votes have never been taken into account by Speakers in the final result for a vote that did not have expressed counting obligation before. Such as General Elections which are organized by the Lazarene Elections Act which explicitly requires to count abstention votes in the final result.

Finally, if the Assembly wishes for the abstention votes to be counted in the legislation process, the Court encourages it to amend current laws to make explicit such a requirement.