I understand your complaint about the terminology and in the linked video that same confusion came up. But the terminology does make sense to me in the context

I understand your complaint about the terminology and in the linked video that same confusion came up. But the terminology does make sense to me in the context of trying to reach consensus. When I’ve been a part of a group looking to reach consensus there’s an occasional ballot/vote taken to check for consensus and there isn’t a functional difference between abstaining and voting for some non-leading option. If you just say up front that there are additional logical constraints on when to abstain vs vote for the leader that make it work in a distributed system, then I think the metaphor serves to help think about it rather than confuse.