Balloting Process

Some decisions within QIBA are made by balloting (usually email).

The balloting process is managed by the secretariat (RSNA).

Ballots are emailed out to all members with voting privileges on the committee making the decision.

The length of the ballot period may be specified by the particular procedure that calls for a ballot, but is generally not less than 14 days to allow for members who are away on vacation, and is sometimes much longer if the decision involves reviewing lengthy documents, or collecting feedback within the members organization.

The secretariat (RSNA) maintains rosters for each committee indicating which members currently have voting privileges.

Voting Privileges among QIBA Technical Committee Members

QIBA Meeting Attendance and Voting Privileges FAQ Voting privileges for QIBA members are based upon meeting participation (i.e., T-Con or WebEx). Attending two consecutive meetings would permit voting, but missing three consecutive meetings would take away voting privileges. These could only be reinstated by attending two consecutive meetings once again. Additional FAQ are found below.

Q. What causes my voting privileges to lapse? Missing three meetings (T-Con or WebEx) in a row.

Q. How do I get them back? Attend two meetings (T-Con or WebEx) in a row. You may vote at the second meeting.

Q. What if I skip every other meeting? You will have voting privileges at every meeting.

Q. What if I carefully attend only every third meeting? You will have voting privileges at every meeting.

Q. What does lapse of privileges prevent me from doing? Voting. You are allowed to attend meetings (and if you can do that twice in a row, you have your privileges back), you can contribute to discussions, work on documents, advocate for issues which may be put to a vote. But when an issue is put to a vote, you are effectively an unrecorded abstention.

Q. What if I submit an email ballot when my Voting Privileges have been suspended? RSNA Staff is responsible for checking all ballot submitters against the current roster and voting privilege status. Since your voting privileges are suspended, your ballot is not counted towards the result.

Q. Are these rules immutable? No. If you think there is a problem (and hopefully if you have a suggestion for something better), inform the QIBA Steering Committee either directly or through your Technical Committee Co-chairs. The Steering Committee can revise the Governance document. Secondly, the Governance document allows some latitude for Technical Committees to define variations/extensions to the rules. This also needs to be run by the Steering Committee, but can be useful if there are special situations that don't warrant changing the rules for everyone.

Abstention FAQ Q. How does it affect when a member abstains? The member has abstained from voting (i.e., chosen not to vote), so it does not count as a "yeah", it does not count as a "nay" and it does not contribute to the number of votes (i.e., the denominator for calculating the majority). So if there are 4 voting members and two vote "yeah", one votes "nay" and one abstains, the proposal would pass with a 66% majority (two out of the three votes cast being "yeah").

Q. So abstentions are completely ignored? No. Abstentions should be recorded along with the votes. Anecdotally, members who simply don't care about an issue often vote in favor. Abstentions often indicate members feel conflicted or lacking information about the issue or are otherwise reluctant to take a position. A vote with a high proportion of abstentions is valid, but perhaps worth the time to explore and consider the reasons for all the abstentions.

Reference to the IHE voting process is available at: http://wiki.ihe.net/index.php?title=Voting_Privileges