Ballot Voting by Cards

[Hopeful Candidate]

At a recent municipal caucus the town chairman presented a slate of endorsed candidates. He then announced from the floor if there were any other nominations. A person stood up and nominated another person and it was seconded.  The chairman allowed the endorsed candidate 3 minutes to speak, but would not allow the newly nominated candidate the same opportunity.

When it came time to vote, all eligible voters received a specific color coded card. They were told to turn them in and they would receive a ballot. After the ballots were collected, the teller took the ballots in another room to count. When they came back, they announced there was a discrepancy. They had more ballots then cards that were collected. At that point, the endorsed candidate came up and said he found his card in his pocket. They accepted it and announced the vote to be a tie. They had us vote again and it was another tie, Then the chairman chose the endorsed candidate as the winner. At the very lease, the vote should not have counted. Or, at lease the one vote the endorsed candidate  made should not have counted since he was turning in his card after the count. Am I crazy to think that?

[jstackpo]

The real crazy thing was letting the chairman break the tie  --  did he/she vote twice, in effect?  Unless the bylaws give the chair that power (quite unlikely) the election remains incomplete.  Raise a point of order to that effect next meeting, and be prepared to go with another round of voting, or two, or more.

[SaintCad]

I'm going to cover this in reverse order.  If the balloting was closed (implied by the votes being counted), they can be reopened only by a majority vote.p 415 l 18-19.  Did the Chair close the balloting or was it closed by 2/3 vote?  However you would need to raise a timely Point of Order.

BUT

The fact that there were more ballots than votes violates the one person = one vote principal (p 407 top of the page).  Since this is a fundamental principle of parliamentary law it constitutes a continuing breach (p 251(d)) and thus you can raise a Point of Order even now that the election is invalid and there needs to be a revote.