"As I reported on July 23, INCITS, the US balloting body on the
OOXML vote, put out a ballot to see whether the US should vote to
approve OOXML, with the ballot to close on August 9. That ballot
has now closed on schedule, and there is a public link that shows
the vote--which failed, with 8 in favor, 7 opposed, and one
abstaining. As I noted previously, a vote of 9 in favor would have
been required for passage. That number is a simple majority of the
16 INCITS Executive Board members that have voting privileges on
this ballot (in fact, the Board has 18 members, but due to
attendance rules, only 16 of the 18 had voting priviliges on this
ballot).
"There is a second leg of the vote, which also failed: out of
the total number responding (in this case, all 16), the abstentions
(one) are subtracted, yielding a number (ten) of which two-thirds
(in this case 10) would need to be in the affirmative..."
