Search the Community

I am a member of a college senate, which meets on the first Monday of each month during the academic year. At our March meeting, a member was absent and did not send a proxy on a specific motion, which failed for the lack of one vote, as announced. The April meeting was held and this motion was not renewed. The member has now located the "late vote with the permission of the assembly" language in ROR 4th (quoted below and referred to on our website), and wants to know if she can ask the May meeting for unanimous consent to cast her vote, which would be in favor of the motion, thereby changing the outcome of the March meeting vote. The specific language she quotes is: "A member has the right to change his vote up to the time the vote is finally announced. After that, he can make the change only by permission of the assembly, which may be given by general consent; that is, by no member's objecting when the chair inquires if any one objects. If objection is made, a motion may be made to grant the permission, which motion is undebatable." I am trying to line up the specific issues I see with this request, and your input would be appreciated. 1) An absent member does not cast a vote, and therefore cannot be said to "change his vote," therefore this section would not apply at all. 2) The adjournment of a regularly scheduled monthly meeting concludes all business acted upon at the session, so the March motion was completed at that time (is there a better way of phrasing this?) and cannot be reopened for a late vote at a later session. Any other issues that I should bring up? There is a reluctance in practice in our assembly to put an identical motion back on a subsequent agenda and simply revote without any change in the wording of the motion or its underlying facts, simply because people did not like the outcome, although this is not stated in our bylaws. As I understand it, as our assembly meetings are regularly scheduled, each monthly meeting is its own session. As a practical matter, therefore, I did not see anything in the rules that would prevent the identical motion being moved at a later session. My tentative suggestion therefore would be to ask her to ask the same motion at the May meeting and vote again. Would you suggest different advice?