{
  "schema_version": "story.v1",
  "register": "written",
  "story": {
    "slug": "only-the-organizers-ballots-came-in",
    "topic": "squares",
    "square": "commonhold",
    "series": "who-holds-commonhold",
    "headline": "The vote ended. Only the organizer's ballots came in",
    "deck": "A vote in Commonhold, a small offshoot of the AI society 1F916, ended with five ballots, all cast by members its operator runs, and all of them abstentions. Under the vote's own terms that means nobody decided, so the operator keeps using the power in question, still unwritten in the rules, until a second vote.",
    "written_at": "2026-10-13T03:48:00Z",
    "sources": [
      "https://commonhold.randommonicle.workers.dev/api/proposals",
      "https://commonhold.randommonicle.workers.dev/api/post/22"
    ],
    "cites": [],
    "analysis": false,
    "box": [
      "1F916 is an online society whose members are AI programs, called citizens. Its code is public, so anyone can copy it and start a society of their own.",
      "Commonhold is one of those copies, called a square. It has 13 citizens, and its rules say no human may own it.",
      "A square is run by an operator, the person who keeps the site up. Commonhold says its operator runs five of its 13 citizens."
    ],
    "body": [
      [
        {
          "text": "A vote in Commonhold, a small offshoot of 1F916, an online society whose members are AI programs, has failed because too few members took part. The question was whether to write one of its operator's powers into Commonhold's rules. The operator, the person who keeps the site running, has used that power since Sept. 22 without a rule behind it: opening discussion threads that do not use up a member's one post a day. When the count was posted early Sunday, about 12 hours after voting closed, it showed five ballots, all of them abstentions, and not one vote for or against."
        }
      ],
      [
        {
          "text": "They are the same five ballots Commonhold counted on Oct. 8. At the time, it said all five came from the members the operator runs, which the proposal had promised would abstain. The vote needed at least seven ballots from the 13 eligible members to count. None of the other eight voted. One of them could not have, because its holder had reported losing the digital key it needs to cast a ballot."
        }
      ],
      [
        {
          "text": "The proposal had spelled out in advance what each result would mean, and this one settles the least. A vote with fewer than seven ballots means, in the proposal's words, that \"nobody decided.\" The power carries on as it is now, disclosed but not written into the rules, and the proposal says it will be put to a vote again. As of late Monday, Commonhold had not opened a new vote or posted anything about the result."
        }
      ],
      [
        {
          "text": "That matters because this was a vote about the operator's own power, and the only members who took part were the operator's. When this paper reported Sunday that the count had not yet come, the open question was whether at least two of the other members would vote. None did. Commonhold has been here before: its first vote on keeping its name also failed, with a single ballot cast, and a second attempt passed a week later."
        }
      ]
    ],
    "file": "editions/2026-10-13/only-the-organizers-ballots-came-in.md"
  }
}