Module 3Run40–50 min

Choosing a rule & running the poll

The deliberation is done. People have spoken, the proposal has been amended, and now the group has to decide. This module covers the two skills that make that moment fair rather than fraught: matching the decision rule to the stakes and the group, and running the poll so the count is honest — including the parts of the count nobody enjoys reporting.

By the end of this module you should be able to pick a rule and defend the choice, run a consent poll with all four responses, apply the threshold and quorum gates separately, and produce a tally that shows objections as plainly as agreement.

You don't need us for this. Everything in this module works with a stack of index cards and a whiteboard. Four piles for the four responses, a head-count for quorum, a fraction on the board for the threshold, and a sheet of paper for the tally. Groups ran consent polls this way long before anyone put them in software, and the paper version is the one you should learn first. Village Assembly is one good way to run the same poll when you want the count timestamped and the record kept for you — it changes the bookkeeping, not the craft.

3.1 The menu: three rules, three jobs

There is no single right decision rule. There are rules suited to different combinations of stakes (how much damage a bad call does, and how hard it is to undo) and group (size, trust, and how much the people affected have to live with each other afterwards). Three cover most of what a small group needs:

The three rules

Consent — the proposal passes unless a defined share of the group actively objects. Suited to decisions a group must live with together: shared resources, shared space, changes to how the group itself works. Consent asks "can everyone tolerate this?", not "does everyone love this?" — a much more useful question for neighbours than for strangers.
Ranked choice — everyone orders the options; the count finds the option with the broadest support. Suited to choosing among several genuine alternatives — a venue, a date, a design — where the group needs one winner and "least disliked" is a fair way to pick it.
Majority with safeguards — more than half carries it, but only inside guard-rails set in advance: a quorum, a notice period, sometimes a supermajority for constitutional matters. Suited to routine, reversible decisions where speed matters and a narrow loss is easy to live with, because next month's meeting can reverse it.

The common failure is using bare majority for high-stakes, hard-to-reverse decisions in a small group. A 13–11 result on something neighbours must share for years doesn't settle the question; it relocates the argument to the car park. Consent is slower on the day and much faster over the season.

Discussion topics

Think of a decision your group made by majority that left a lasting split. Would consent have produced a different proposal before the vote?
Which of your group's recurring decisions are genuinely routine and reversible — and could safely move to majority-with-safeguards to save meeting time?
When has "least disliked" (ranked choice) been the fairer outcome than "most loved"?

3.2 Consent in depth: four responses, four signals

A consent poll offers each member four responses, and each one carries different information. Collapsing them into "yes/no" throws that information away.

The four responses

Agree — "I support this." The straightforward signal.
Agree with reservations — "I support this going ahead, and I have concerns I want on the record." The reservations get written down; they don't block. This is where a group learns what to watch as the decision plays out.
Stand aside — "I won't take part in this decision, and I won't stand in its way." A member may stand aside because they're conflicted, personally affected, absent from the deliberation, or simply unwilling to own the outcome. Stand-asides are recorded but counted outside the objection tally.
Object — "I believe this proposal should not proceed, and here is why." An objection is a claim about the proposal, not a mood. It comes with a stated reason, and it counts against the threshold.

Why stand-aside and object are different signals. An objection says the group is about to make a mistake. A stand-aside says I am not the right person to be part of this call. Merging them corrupts both: counting stand-asides as objections lets a disengaged member block, and counting objections as stand-asides erases a warning the group paid for. Keep the piles separate on the table and separate in the record.

Fernside worked example. In proposal VA-2026-014 — Ana's proposal to convert 8 of the Fernside Garden Collective's 24 plots to a food-bank bed — the poll returned two objections, and they were different in kind. Elena objected on principle: allocating members' plots to an external purpose changes what the collective is, and she put up a stated alternative (voluntary rows within existing plots). Ruth objected on capacity: eight beds is more than the volunteer roster can water through February. Neither stood aside — both wanted their objection to count and to be recorded. A member who was overseas for the whole deliberation would have been a natural stand-aside: not blocking, not endorsing, just not part of this one.

Discussion topics

Has your group ever pressured someone to "just abstain" when they actually objected? What did that cost later?
"Agree with reservations" often predicts exactly where a decision will strain. Who in your group reads the reservations three months on?

3.3 Thresholds and quorum: two gates, both set in advance

A consent result has to pass two separate gates, and it must pass both:

Gate 1 — Quorum. Were enough members present (or voting) for the group to be entitled to decide at all? Quorum protects the group from a quiet Tuesday minority deciding for everyone. It is checked before the result is read, and a failed quorum means no decision — not a provisional one.

Gate 2 — Objection threshold. Of those voting, did objections stay under the agreed share? The threshold is the group's answer, settled in calmer times, to "how much considered opposition should stop us?"

Both gates live in the group's charter, not in the facilitator's judgement. This matters more than it looks. A facilitator who can decide on the night that "two objections feels like too many" — or "feels fine" — has become the decision rule. Setting the numbers in the charter, before anyone knows which proposal they'll apply to, is what keeps the poll a measurement rather than a negotiation.

Fernside worked example. The Fernside charter sets the objection threshold at under one fifth of votes cast, with quorum at half the membership. On VA-2026-014, quorum was met, and Elena's and Ruth's two objections came in under the one-fifth line — so the amended proposal was adopted. Note what did not happen: nobody argued on the night about whether two objections was "a lot". The charter had already answered that, back when the question was abstract and nobody's plot was at stake.

Key teaching points

Quorum asks "may we decide?"; the threshold asks "did this pass?". Passing one gate says nothing about the other.
Set both numbers in the charter, in advance, in the abstract. Numbers chosen mid-poll are numbers chosen to produce an outcome.
A threshold crossed is not a failure of the meeting — it is the rule working. The proposal goes back for another round, better informed.

3.4 Put the amended proposal to the ballot — not the original

Deliberation changes proposals; that is the point of it. So the text on the ballot must be the proposal as amended, read out (or displayed) in full before anyone responds. Polling the original text after the group has spent an hour improving it makes the deliberation ornamental — and it invites the worst kind of dispute later: "that's not what I voted for."

Fernside worked example. By poll time, Ana's original text had picked up two amendments: Marcus's sunset clause (the conversion lapses after one season unless renewed by a fresh decision) and Priya's ballot amendment tightening the wording of what "converted" means. The question Fernside voted on was Ana's proposal with both amendments folded in, read back in full before the four responses were called. Elena and Ruth objected to the amended text — which is exactly what makes their objections meaningful. An objection to a superseded draft tells the group nothing.

Key teaching points

Read the final amended text back in full immediately before the poll. No "as discussed" shorthand.
If an amendment lands so late that people haven't absorbed it, delay the poll — don't poll a text half the room hasn't heard.
The record should carry the original, the amendments, and the final text, so anyone can see how the proposal earned its final shape.

3.5 Counting honestly

The count is where trust is won or lost. An honest count has one defining feature: the objection count is displayed as prominently as the agreement count. Not in a footnote, not "and there were some concerns", but in the same breath and the same type size. "Adopted, 19–2 with one stand-aside and three reservations noted" is a complete, honest result. "Adopted overwhelmingly" is not a count; it is marketing.

Adoption never hides the objections. A proposal that passes with objections passed with objections — permanently. The objectors gave the group its early-warning system for free; burying the warning is how groups walk into the same wall twice. (Module 4 is entirely about what to do with those preserved objections.)

An honest count, in practice

Announce all four numbers: agree, agree-with-reservations, stand-aside, object. Every time, even when a category is zero.
State both gates explicitly: "quorum met (16 of 24 members voting; the charter requires half); objections 2 of 16 votes cast, under the charter's one-fifth threshold."
Record the objections verbatim with the result — never as "some members disagreed".
The same sheet reports adoption and non-adoption. If the layout only works when the news is good, the layout is the problem.

You don't need us for this either. The honest count is a norm, not a feature. A whiteboard with four numbers on it, photographed and stapled into the minute book, does the job. What Village Assembly adds is that the four numbers, the two gates, and the verbatim objections are captured in one structured record at the moment of the poll — so honesty doesn't depend on whoever writes up the minutes a week later.

Watch this happen. The demo shows Fernside's consent poll on VA-2026-014 run end to end — four responses called, quorum checked, the one-fifth threshold applied, and Elena's and Ruth's objections displayed beside the adoption, not beneath it. Watch the poll stage in the demo →

Template · Consent Poll Sheet

One sheet per proposal, filled in at the moment of the poll. Works on paper exactly as printed; the demo produces the same structure digitally.

Proposal (final amended text — reference or attach)
Date · meeting · facilitator

Response	Tally	Count
Agree
Agree with reservations (note each reservation below)
Stand aside (recorded; not counted as objection)
Object (each objection recorded verbatim below)

Gate 1 — Quorum check: members present / voting vs charter quorum
Gate 2 — Charter objection threshold: objections ÷ votes cast vs charter figure
Result (both gates required)

Objections and reservations, verbatim:

Objections are preserved with this result either way — adopted or not, they travel with the decision.

Self-check

1. A community garden group must decide whether to give up a third of its shared plots for a season — a decision the whole membership will live with, and hard to undo mid-season. Which rule fits best?

Match the rule to stakes and group. Ranked choice picks among alternatives; majority suits routine, reversible calls. A high-stakes shared-living decision is consent territory — a narrow majority would relocate the argument, not settle it.

2. What is the difference between a stand-aside and an objection?

They are different signals about different things — one is about the proposal, the other about the member's own position. Merging them lets disengagement block, or erases a warning.

3. Why does the ballot put the amended proposal to the group, rather than the original?

The poll measures the group's response to the proposal in its final shape. (The original isn't deleted — it stays in the record so anyone can see how the text evolved.)

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