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I'm not sure if I have a question or just desire some commiserating... Does anybody know what "Consensus" or "Modified Consensus" would be as a Parliamentary Authority? "All TOLIS activities and organization shall be run though consensus. Training in consensus building and running meetings with consensus management will be provided as the TOLIS board deems needed and will be a part of all the leadership trainings developed. A modified form of consensus meeting management will be used with the caveat that if consensus is not able to be reached (with people in disagreement being able to choose to not block progress with their dissent, which would mean the group has the consensus needed to make a decision), then the issue will be tabled to a second meeting. If it is unable to be decided upon with the second meeting through consensus then a vote will be taken with 2/3 majority of people voting wins. If the issue needs to be decided there on the spot due to timing issues (there not being time to have another meeting) and there is a board member present, they will make the decision. If there are two board members present and they disagree, another board member will be consulted (preferably the MSS or President) for a tie-breaking vote. If there is no board member present the Council Chair will try to bring one in via electronic means first before deciding to go ahead with the voting process. This attempt to communicate with the board will be documented in minutes of the meeting. The rules contained in the current edition of Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised shall govern TOLIS only in cases to which they are applicable, where specific groups have determined through consensus that they want to use them in lieu of consensus decision making, and in cases in which they are not inconsistent with these bylaws and any special rules of order the TOLIS Board of Directors may adopt."

Article VI of the By Laws for my incorporated Homeowners Association, "Parliamentary Authority," is missing the "not" found in the RONR model - "The rules contained in the current issue of Robert's Rules of Order, Newly Revised shall govern the proceedings of the Association in all cases in which they are inconsistent with these Bylaws or those of the Articles of Incorporation." (emphasis added) ... i.e., versus the more logical model, "in which they are not inconsistent" (emphasis again added) At the very least, this seems to set up an endless loop with respect to parliamentary authority itself: our bylaws defer to RONR, which defers to our bylaws, which defer to RONR, et cetera. As crucial if not more so, since our bylaws are near-silent on removal of a Board director, this parliamentary authority construction of ours seems to point us very heavily to Chapter XX of RONR (11th ed.) . . . which was completely ignored by the Board in an effort this past month to remove one of our directors from the Board. Back to our bylaw on Parliamentary Authority, I have two questions -- (1) As it stands, does our bylaw on Parliamentary Authority even have any force whatsoever, since it seems openly inconsistent with RONR, but then by its own terms would itself be stating that RONR is thereby applicable . . . ? (2) If we were to decide to "correct" this particular bylaw to include the missing "not," would we need to go through the full process usually required for amendment of a bylaw? or can a case be made that ours is an error as obvious as a misspelled word or a missing comma (although even those errors are not necessarily incidental)?