Nominations/Voting

[Guest hill]

We had nominations tonight.  There were some votes that are questionable to me.  2 votes were written on the same sheet of regular notebook paper, and were signed by the members, not a anonymous nomination form like everyone else, and they were handed in by someone else.  They were not at the meeting.  There were 3 votes sent in by text, and 3 by phone.  There was never an actual meeting called to order for the nominations, nor adjournment, obviously.  Can this be right?  Everyone who was present sat there for around 2 hours waiting for  the results to be announced, not knowing that they were out of sight, calling and texting people, because they needed their nominations.  Are the votes valid?  Should there be nominations be taken again by everyone, or will just those ballots be taken out?  It doesn't state an answer to any of these questions in our bylaws, but it does state the RROO shall govern the proceedings of the meeting.  Thanks.

[Hieu H. Huynh]

The details are not clear to me. Are you doing nominations by ballot? What about elections?

 

[Guest hill]

It was nominations by ballot.  Our election is supposed to take place on Thursday.  It doesn't state in our by laws to cover absentee (text or call) or proxy nominations/votes.  They never divulged this information about absentee voting before hand nor do many of the parents know at this point.  I'm sure many, including myself, would have rather stayed home and just texted our nomination in, but the only people that were called, or texted, or had curb side pick up of theirs, just happen to be for the guy who is trying to disassemble our board and take over.  And about 50% of the members were given approximately a 2 hour notice, while some chosen people, had nearly a week's notification. This is just one in the line of many questionable things that happen daily with these people. 

[Kim Goldsworthy]

1 hour ago, Guest hill said:

We had nominations tonight. 

There were some votes that are questionable to me. 

2 votes were written on the same sheet of regular notebook paper, and were signed by the members, not a anonymous nomination form like everyone else, and they were handed in by someone else. 

They were not at the meeting. 

There were 3 votes sent in by text, and 3 by phone. 

There was never an actual meeting called to order for the nominations, nor adjournment, obviously. 

Can this be right? 

Everyone who was present sat there for around 2 hours waiting for  the results to be announced, not knowing that they were out of sight, calling and texting people, because they needed their nominations. 

Are the votes valid? 

Should there be nominations be taken again by everyone, or will just those ballots be taken out? 

It doesn't state an answer to any of these questions in our bylaws, but it does state the RROO shall govern the proceedings of the meeting.

 

You had nominations?

You had voting?

In the same meeting? But no meeting was convened? And no meeting was adjourned?

[Kim Goldsworthy]

>> . . . about 50% of the members were given approximately a 2 hour notice, while some chosen people, had nearly a week's notification.

kg: If that was the notice, then the notice is invalid. (I assume your bylaws do not allow for notices of less than one day.)

So, no nominations can be given, and no voting can be conducted.

 

 

[Guest Hill]

We only did the nomination part.  They informed us that voting was on thirsday. They hair walked around and casually passed out nomination ballots, there was no meeting called to order not adjourned. About half of the members were notified days ago, the other half approximately 2 hours prior on our team Facebook page or when they actually got to practice. Some abstained because they were clueless and didn't know who to put down or they wrote random people leaving the end count with half of the votes that were planned because they told half that knew about the meeting to all vote the same way and then the other half had no clue who was interested, so there were a bunch of people that had 2-3 nominations instead of us being given the chance to think about it or get together to see who was a good candidate and use our nominations on one person instead of 7. We only use the top 2, so if a couple people put down someone who wasn't even wanting nominated, then their nomination ballot was pretty much useless. They had days to organize their plan and get enough people to nominate a certain person, we weren't given that opportunity because we were either given 2 hours if we happened to check Facebook or about 10 minutes if we didn't know until we got there.  I'm actually on this board and was given no prior notice or invited to discuss these events. 

[Guest Hill]

This is straight from our bylaws. Seeing that they didn't even do this in a form of a meeting, are they going to say they didn't have to give notice?  

[Richard Brown]

It looks like what was done was completely out of order and is null and void.

Thank you for posting the bylaws provisions about meetings.  Now, what EXACTLY do your bylaws say about nominations?  I haven't a clue how your organization is supposed to conduct nominations from what you have posted.  What was done certainly does not conform to the procedure set out in RONR.  Your own bylaw provisions would take precedence, but we haven't a clue what they are.

[Guest hill]

There isn't a single thing in the bylaws about nominations.  Our bylaws are literally 4 pages long and half of them are nothing about rules or substantial meaning.  There has been countless things happen over the last week, that the few of us that go by the books that are left are clueless of how to approach this or take action against the other half of the board because now we are in the minority when it comes to voting on anything.  Even if we show them proof in black and white, they put their hands up or scream over top of us. We have asked for board meetings numerous times, as well as parents asking for meetings, and they simply say no. 

[Richard Brown]

Guest hill, you have several issues and I'm not sure how much help we can be, but we will keep trying.  The more information we have, the easier it is for us to help you.  At this point I'm just going to make some comments and suggestions.

1.  This appears to be some kind of school sports league.  From what I read of them on this forum, they seem to have a strange way of operating that is completely alien to me.  Maybe others on here are more familiar with these organizations.  Maybe school officials can be of help to you.

2.  From what little I have seen of your bylaws, I am not at all impressed with them.  What I have seen is very disappointing.  I  see where parents and guardians of players can vote.  Are they members?  Do the bylaws even define who the members are?  Does each family get one vote or does each parent get one vote?   Maybe the rest of the bylaws are better, but it looks to me like a complete new set of bylaws might be in order.

3.  As to nominations and elections, your bylaws do not address nominations, but they don't necessarily need to.  RONR covers both nominations and elections.  Per RONR, you can set the method of making nominations by motion.  Someone could move to appoint or elect a nominating committee to report the nominations at the next meeting. If there is no nominating committee, you can just take nominations from the floor immediately preceding the elections.   The two most common methods of obtaining nominations are by use of a nominating committee and by taking nominations from the floor. Write in votes should also be allowed.

4.  I'm curious as to your knowledge of parliamentary procedure.  What books on parliamentary procedure do you have?   If you don't have any, or if you have just an inexpensive "knockoff" version of Robert's Rules, I suggest you get one, two or all three of the following books:  Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised, 11th edition (commonly referred to as RONR), about $14 from Amazon; RONR in Brief, about $5 from Amazon, and Robert's Rules for Dummies, 3rd edition, by C. Alan Jennings, about $14 from Amazon.

RONR and RONR in Brief are described here http://robertsrules.com/book.html and here: http://robertsrules.com/inbrief.html.  RONR is "The Bible" of parliamentary procedure.  It is 716 pages (almost 800 with introduction, preface and tables) of detailed rules and minutiae and can be a bit hard to grasp for beginners.  But, it is THE authority.  RONR in Brief is a VERY brief primer which contains just the basics of how to properly run a meeting, make motions, etc.  Robert's Rules for Dummies is a book ABOUT RONR and is an excellent aid in understanding RONR.  It is written in layman's terms and is much easier to understand for beginners, but should not be cited as a parliamentary authority.  It is not intended to be a parliamentary authority in and of itself.  I woul1d say it is at a level between RONR in Brief and RONR.   You can order all three from Amazon for about $33 with free shipping (even without Amazon Prime).   If you don't have any books on parliamentary procedure and if money is tight, I would probably suggest RONR in Brief. It covers nominations and elections in three pages.  RONR devotes 17 pages to nominations and elections.  I don't yet have the 3rd edition of Dummies and I've loaned out my 1st and 2nd editions, so I can't tell you how many pages it devotes to nominations and elections, but I'm confident it's considerably more than three pages but probably less than 17.  All three books are available in most large bookstores, but are more expensive in stores.