Early reports indicate that Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format appears to have enough votes to be certified an ISO standard but complaints of irregularities and strong-arm tactics are rife.

The OpenMalaysia blog, run by openness advocates and students, found that the ballot, which closed Saturday night, had the necessary combination of more than two-thirds approve votes and less than a quarter for disapprove.

Lawyer and standards expert Andrew Updegrove, an advocate for rival standard OpenDocument, found the same conclusion, based on official statements and reports from participants.

If confirmed by the ISO, the vote is a victory for Microsoft and other industry backers of OOXML at Ecma, the standards body that submitted OOXML to ISO/IEC (International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission).

ISO certification will make products that use OOXML, officially called DIS 29500, more attractive to government customers concerned with long-term archives of digital documents. It could also be more appealing to developers who want to build products based on those file formats.

Calls for review?
However, people are already speculating that there will be challenges to some of the votes from national standards bodies.

The vote, which closed on Saturday, followed a ballot resolution meeting (BRM) in February that was meant to address outstanding technical issues with the 6,000-page document and move to consensus.

In some cases, however, standards bodies did not change their vote to yes following the BRM. France, for example, has maintained its no vote, according to a newspaper report.

Some countries, including Venezuela, even changed from supporting the standardisation to opposing it, an unusual move that underscores the political nature of the process.

In the run-up to this vote, there have been accounts of Microsoft employees or partners having undue influence on the results of national standards bodies, including Norway. Groklaw has a translation of a Computerworld Norge article, as well as accounts of close votes in Germany and Croatia.

Even before the end of voting on Saturday, participants and technology enthusiasts complained that Microsoft and other OOXML backers have exposed flaws in the ISO process. Ecma chose an accelerated fast-track process, which many view as inappropriate for a weighty technical specification that has what some consider unresolved legal questions.

Earlier stages of the multiyear standards bid reportedly raised questions with European Union antitrust regulators. The Wall Street Journal in February reported that the EU has looked into whether Microsoft misused its desktop software dominance in influencing the first attempt to certify OOXML at ISO in September, a measure which did not pass and precipitated Saturday's follow-on vote.