It is evident to me that the appeal voting is highly vulnerable to manipulation when you have to get a 2/3 majority. The voting was not even on the substance of the appeals but on "further processing" them and I am not aware of any "further processing" formality decision requirement. A 2/3 majority rule always means that one option is favoured in advance. In ISO and national bodies it is common for processing of specifications where the bias is usually towards adoption. Do you need a 2/3 majority for "processing further" the appeal or "rejecting it before consideration"? You get the point. At times you vote until you get the wanted results. A friend of mine was furious about the ISO/IEC decision and asked himself similar questions:

Where is it written that it is needed a support of 2/3 to process an appeal? This could be considered a humiliation for the countries that have summitted the appeals.

Looks like the ISO/IEC procedural rules and their interpretation offer great surprises again. Or as a more devilish commentator suggested

It is an elegant abuse of newly invented rules to justify the abuse of previous rules. You have to admire the way it even sounds democratic…

[...]

This is not the end

The NB concerned may appeal this decision to the Councils.

I am curious if that would happen. The effects are described by the ISO press release

According to the ISO/IEC rules, DIS 29500 can now proceed to publication as an ISO/IEC International Standard. This is expected to take place within the next few weeks on completion of final processing of the document, and subject to no further appeals against the decision.

Effectively it would make a lot of sense for National Bodies to do it.

--Leif Lodahl