Ms

[Guest Jackie]

Our local organization is a subset of both a state and national organization.  The rules of the national organization supersede local rules if there is a conflict. 

 

I have reviewed all three sets of bylaws and cannot find any conflicting information.

 

We are in an election year and I am on the nominating committee.  This is my first election in the organization.  Initially all offices were unopposed but we had a late nomination for the position that heads our local organization.

 

Since the announcement of the second candidate, nominees in the unopposed positions have been addressing one of the members of the nominating committee with questions and concerns but these concerns are not being brought up to the nominating committee chairperson (who happens to be the second nominee for the leadership position in our organization).  That committee member has been bringing those issues up to the chairperson and me. 

 

Since I am a new member to the organization (the others have all gone through multiple elections), I have been diligently researching the questions and concerns.  I have read and re-read the national, state and local bylaws and have not found any validity to any of the concerns.

 

The questions have been addressed directly by the nominating committee chairperson.  One of the questions was “can the nominees submit information for the membership to review”.  Although I could not find any evidence of this having been done before on a local level, the nominating committee chairperson agreed and requested bios from all nominees in a group e-mail.

 

One of the nominees immediately responded back in a reply all fashion asking for resumes. Although I am not the chairperson I replied all back that any responses need to be addressed to the nominating committee only and restated that the nominating chairperson has requested bios not resumes.

 

The person who made the resume request replied back only to me in an e-mail stating that she was not aware that the nominating chairperson has asked for bios….of course that was a reply to the original message that stated bios were being requested but she conveniently deleted the original portion of the message out about the bios the chairperson requested.

 

The next day this same nominee (who incidentally is running unopposed) sent a 3 page resume to the nominating committee stating that she had talked to the head of our local organization asking if she could submit a resume instead of the bio the committee chairperson requested and stated that the head of the local organization told her it was okay.

 

Personally I have an issue with this since the bylaws are very clear and state that the local leader “be ex-officio a member of all committees except the nominating committee”.  My interpretation of that statement is that what the chair of the nominating committee asks for is what should be done and the local leader should not circumvent her authority.

 

As an aside, the nominating committee was voted for by the organization’s members who were present at the meeting and the local leader personally selected the chair person for the nominating committee.  All this was done according to the bylaws of the organization.

 

I expressed my concern directly with the nominating committee chairperson about the ex parte communication the nominee had with the local leader and stated that I thought the chairperson should reinforce her original request.  I am not in charge and merely expressed my opinion.  The chairperson makes the final decision.

 

Today we received a second resume from a candidate.  This candidate is running in the contested race against the nominating committee chairperson.

 

We are planning to send out the bios to the membership before the meeting we will be voting at.

 

My question is this….should we send the resumes along with the bios?  The nominating committee chairperson has remained silent on the subject of resumes verses bios.  It is my personal opinion that there will be backlash if some are allowed to submit their work history and fear that someone will challenge the election. 

I cannot find any information in the national, state or local bylaws regarding invalidating an election or challenging the results of an election.

 

Any advice would be welcomed.  Thank you for your consideration.

[Hieu H. Huynh]

Your organization could decide whether to send bios and/or resumes on the candidates.

[Gary Novosielski]

RONR does not address these issues, except that it strongly recommends that the President not be involved with the nominating committee.  Since your bylaws apparently follow that recommendation, it would be best to ignore any attempts by the president to meddle in the process.  Within the nominating committee, all decisions are not made by the chairman.  They are made by a majority vote of the committee.

I think all the other questions you asked would have the same answer: It's up to the nominating committee to decide, according to its best judgment.