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Can proposed by-law changes be revoked before voting on them?


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The by-law committee, with the approval of the board of directors, has sent a notice to members to vote on several by-law changes. Now, they realized that the changes were worded incorrectly and would give a harmful effect to the organization. Can a motion be made to not vote on those amendments at the meeting?

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Can a motion be made to not vote on those amendments at the meeting?

 

No (a motion to not do something is out of order improper). But, at the meeting, there's no need to make a motion to adopt the flawed proposal (i.e. to actually amend the bylaws). And even if such a motion is made, it can be defeated.

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No (a motion to not do something is out of order improper). But, at the meeting, there's no need to make a motion to adopt the flawed proposal (i.e. to actually amend the bylaws). And even if such a motion is made, it can be defeated.

Depending on how much needs to be changed to fix these, it might also be possible to amend them.

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Depending on how much needs to be changed to fix these, it might also be possible to amend them.

 

Yes, but the "original" motion would still have to be made and there's no need to to make a motion to amend the bylaws in a way that would be harmful to the organization (hoping that it will, itself, be amended before adoption).

 

Rather than make a motion to burn down the clubhouse and then amend it to strike "burn down" and insert "paint", it's best not to make such a motion in the first place.

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The by-law committee, with the approval of the board of directors, has sent a notice to members to vote on several by-law changes. Now, they realized that the changes were worded incorrectly and would give a harmful effect to the organization. Can a motion be made to not vote on those amendments at the meeting?

Some members are voting by mail and will have already sent their votes in. Others will be voting at the meeting.

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Some members are voting by mail and will have already sent their votes in. Others will be voting at the meeting.

 

Well, RONR strongly advises against combining mail-in (i.e. absentee) votes with "in-person" votes. At the very least, everyone should be voting on the same thing (i.e. no changes at the meeting). So you might want to get the word out that adopting this proposal is a bad idea.

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Some members are voting by mail and will have already sent their votes in. Others will be voting at the meeting.

 

"An organization should never adopt a bylaw permitting a question to be decided by a voting procedure in which the votes of persons who attend a meeting are counted together with ballots mailed in by absentees. The votes of those present could be affected by debate, by amendments, and perhaps by the need for repeated balloting, while those absent would be unable to adjust their votes to reflect these factors. Consequently, the absentee ballots would in most cases be on a somewhat different question than that on which those present were voting, leading to confusion, unfairness, and inaccuracy in determining the result."

 

RONR, 11th ed., p. 423.

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One hopes that the motion "to burn down the clubhouse", given as an example in post #4, was not intended as an example of a proposed amendment to the bylaws.

You're probably right.  And I think it would be particularly inappropriate to make it a "standing" rule.  A Point of Irony to that effect would surely be ruled well-taken.  

 

Alternatively, the motion which originally authorized the building of the clubhouse could be Re-cindered.

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