Quorum

In law, a quorum is the minimum number of members of a deliberative body necessary to conduct the business of that group. By default, this is a majority of the people expected to be there, although many bodies may have a much lower quorum. For instance, the House of Lords can decide on procedural issues if a mere three members are present. By contrast, according to Article One of the United States Constitution, the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate each have a quorum of a majority of their respective members. The Senate has the additional requirement in Rule VI of its standing rules of a "majority of the members duly chosen and sworn."

Quorum-busting

When quorum is not met, a legislative body cannot hold a vote, and cannot change the status quo. Therefore, voters who are in favor of the status quo are able to use an obstructive strategy called quorum-busting. If a significant number of voters choose not to be present for the vote, the vote will fail due to lack of quorum, and the status quo will remain.

A prominent example of quorum-busting occurred in 2003, when the Texas House of Representatives was going to vote on a redistricting bill that would have benefited the Republicanss in the state. The House Democratss, seeing that they were outnumbered, chose not to meet that day, but instead got on a bus to Oklahoma, temporarily preventing the bill from passing.

Large legislative bodies often have rules to discourage quorum-busting. In many U.S legislative bodies, such as the Senate, absent members can be arrested and brought to the vote. For that reason, the Texas Democrats fled to Oklahoma so they would be outside of the jurisdiction of Texas laws that could have had them arrested.

Quorum in online communities

When votes are held in large online communities, where it may never be the case that a majority of the members are "present", the effect of quorum is different. Being absent from the vote no longer requires particular effort, but is the default case: voters are usually assumed to be absent unless they cast a vote. Online communities therefore tend to have quorums that are much less than a majority of the members.

In such votes, a non-monotonic aspect can be introduced: a voter can inadvertently swing a vote from failing to passing by voting "no", if a majority has voted "yes" and that "no" vote is the one that causes quorum to be met. With no penalty for being absent, voters are faced with a strategic choice between voting "no" and not voting.

The Debian project has addressed this issue in its voting mechanisms with the idea of per-option quorum. A quorum is not set on the total number of votes, but on the number of votes a particular option (besides the status quo) must receive before it is considered. For example, in a yes/no vote, the quorum may say that at least 40 "yes" votes are required, along with "yes" having a majority of votes, for the vote to pass.

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