Abstain from voting...

Hello everyone, a question and discussion that is quite common and recurrent in the playgroups of my region is related to non-voting and abstention.

The rulebook says minions and can vote for or against, but does not talk about abstaining or simply not voting.

Can a player who has declared that he will abstain with his minions change his mind later and change the vote to for or against?

Can a vampire who has not stated how he will vote (neither for, against, nor abstain) be the target of cards like Kindred Coercio, Scalpel Tongue, Velvet Tongue?

Sydnelson wrote: Hello everyone, a question and discussion that is quite common and recurrent in the playgroups of my region is related to non-voting and abstention.

The rulebook says minions and can vote for or against, but does not talk about abstaining or simply not voting.

Can a player who has declared that he will abstain with his minions change his mind later and change the vote to for or against?

6.3.3. Gaining Votes
Methuselahs have no inherent votes nor ballots -- votes and ballots must be gained, and there are a variety of ways to do so. Once gained, a vote or a ballot need not be cast right away, if at all.

That line tells you that the votes dont have to be cast (ie abstain), and that if you dont cast them immediately, you can still wait to cast them later in discussion.

Sydnelson wrote: Can a vampire who has not stated how he will vote (neither for, against, nor abstain) be the target of cards like Kindred Coercio, Scalpel Tongue, Velvet Tongue?

If the card says 'target a minion who has cast their votes' it cannot target an abstaining vampire - as they have not cast their votes.

I guess the important thing is that "to abstain" in the sense of "not to cast any votes yet" does not mark actively a specific gamestate, and that votes could still be cast by that vampire. (I was not 100% aware of that.)

While this is obviously not by the rules (since abstaining is not a rules term), in my playgroup, when it comes to voting, once you declare that a particular vampire is abstaining, it means that not voting is his final decision (that kinda streamlines the whole ballot process).Of course, we also say that a particular vampire 'will not vote for now', meaning that that vampire can indeed vota later, usually depending on other vampire's votes...

narpassword wrote: 6.3.3. Gaining Votes
Methuselahs have no inherent votes nor ballots -- votes and ballots must be gained, and there are a variety of ways to do so. Once gained, a vote or a ballot need not be cast right away, if at all.

That line tells you that the votes dont have to be cast (ie abstain), and that if you dont cast them immediately, you can still wait to cast them later in discussion.

To be fair, that line in the rulebook is a mealy-mouthed way to explain that gained votes or ballots do not need to be cast. All that line is saying is that votes or ballots are sometimes not cast at all. It could be referring only to situations where casting votes or ballots are prevented by card text. There's nothing there about being able to not cast gained votes or ballots. I'm guessing this is why the original poster has run into this problem recurrently (I have also run into the same problem, and I was not confident that the rulebook allowed gained votes or ballots to not be cast as currently worded).