Quorum and threshold

How many had to turn up, and how much of them had to agree. Two numbers, and almost every governance argument lives in them.

Quorum is the share of eligible voting weight that has to cast a ballot before the result counts at all. It exists to stop a handful of members deciding something on a quiet week, and it is the reason not voting is never neutral: abstention is what starves a quorum.

Threshold is how much of the decisive vote has to be in favour. Simple majority means more yes than no. Supermajority here means at least two thirds of the yes-and-no votes — abstentions have already done their job at the quorum test and drop out of this one.

Raising either protects against a rushed or narrow decision, and makes the organization easier to paralyse. That trade is the whole subject.

Figure 4

The same vote, passing and failing

Move turnout, the quorum bar, and the yes share. The arithmetic is the arithmetic Solon applies when a session closes.

55% of eligible weight cast a ballot
50% must vote for the result to bind
60% of the decisive votes are yes
Threshold

The bar is the whole electorate of 100. The unfilled part is the members who did not vote — which is what a quorum measures.

Cast
55
Yes
29
No
20
Abstain
6
  • Quorum: 55 of 100 cast, 50 needed — met
  • Threshold: 29 yes against 20 no — met

Approved

Computed by the rules in src/lib/config/governance.ts

What Solon asks for, by category

The bar rises with what is at stake. Operations needs 30% turnout because ordinary work has to be cheap to decide; Governance rules needs 60% and two thirds in favour, because it is the category that can rewrite every other row.

  1. Operations30%

    quorum of eligible weight

  2. Allocation policy50%

    quorum of eligible weight

  3. Treasury spend50%

    quorum of eligible weight

  4. Aid disbursement50%

    quorum of eligible weight

  5. Membership50%

    quorum of eligible weight

  6. Safety50%

    quorum of eligible weight

  7. Governance rules60%

    quorum of eligible weight

A session stays open for 7 days, and its rules — electorate, threshold, quorum — are snapshotted the moment it opens. Editing the table above never rewrites a vote that is already running, which is the difference between a constitution and a settings page. Supermajority is fixed at 67% of the decisive vote.