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Minutes and Election Results.


Guest Jill Hutton

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Our bylaws say that our voting committee will tally the written ballots and report the final winner to the president. The president will announce the winner which will be confirmed by the committee.

Our by laws say all meetings will be governed by the rules set forth in roberts rules of order, version and publisher to be determined by the President.

The president said that our meetings that we follow modified roberts rules so we don't have to follow full roberts rules. This makes no sense to me as this has nothing to do with the minutes and recording information.

I have been doing the minutes and came across the section which discusses that the teller report which is the election tally should be included in the minutes.

The president says well we have never ever done that before(included that report in the minutes) and people should not know what the tally was and we have never announced it at the meetings or included it.

Who is right here?

Also, this is a non profit organization and aren't all records open to their members anyway?

Thank you.

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Our by laws say all meetings will be governed by the rules set forth in roberts rules of order, version and publisher to be determined by the President.

Then you'll want to amend those bylaws ASAP. See here for the recommended language. In the meantime you're left trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

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I'm flattered (I think) that I should be singled out. I'll weasel a bit: RONR, p. 418, sez "The teller's report is entered..." and from what Jill Hutton wrote, it was -- the "report" itself was just limited to the "who won?" result.

Jill's folks should pass a motion demanding that the full tally be included in the teller's report. Here's the template of reasons why:

Indeed it is the proper thing to do, to read out the numerical vote results for the members to hear -- see p. 417, line 18 ff. - and to include them in the minutes.

Consider some possibilities:

1) The winner got nearly all the votes and the loser has had a long history of fruitlessly running for office. Reading the vote count might send him a message, that it is time to quit making a fool of himself.

2) The vote is "reasonably" close. This way the loser will be encouraged to try again, as it seems, by the vote, that he has a good deal of potential, and many friends, but just went up against a better person this time. This may help to keep a good candidate in the game.

3) The vote is "extremely" close - one or two votes different. The assembly may very well want to order a recount (RONR p. 410, line 33, see index also) just to be sure of the result. This way there are no (or fewer) hard feelings.

4) The president, when declaring who won, makes a simple mistake and names the wrong person, or he does not understand the vote required to adopt the motion (majority, 2/3, &c.) and states the "wrong" outcome.

5) The tellers make an error. Reading the results out loud may not help to catch this but studying the printed documentation in the minutes at leisure probably would. The documentation would also serve as evidence if there were serious questions about the outcome.

Without the teller having read the numbers, how will anybody (except the teller, if he is paying attention) know to correct this?

6) The winner of the election (or partisans of the winning side of a critical issue) could weigh the numerical results in terms of whether they have a "mandate" to proceed at full bore, or whether there might be some fence mending to look after first.

If the vote results were not made immediately available to the membership, none of the above good things could happen.

And this listing doesn't even mention the myriad possibilities for knavery or outright fraud that are available when vote counts are kept secret.

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Jill's folks should pass a motion demanding that the full tally be included in the teller's report.

I'm not sure what Ms. Hutton's parents have to do with this but, assuming this president has exercised his right to chose the parliamentary authority and, per John R.'s post, assuming he has found one which says the voting details should not be included from the minutes, would the adoption of this motion constitute a suspension of the rules, thereby requiring a two-thirds vote? And would this be a rule that could be suspended?

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Edgar asked: "I'm not sure what Ms. Hutton's parents have to do with this but, assuming this president has exercised his right to chose the parliamentary authority and, per John R.'s post, assuming he has found one which says the voting details should not be included from the minutes, would the adoption of this motion constitute a suspension of the rules, thereby requiring a two-thirds vote? And would this be a rule that could be suspended?"

Assuming, perhaps rashly, that the rogue version of "robert's rules" that the president found to back up his claim that election results don't go in minutes defines "Rule of Order" in the same way as does RONR, then I'd say that Yes, a "full tally in the minutes" rule would be a "Special Rule of Order", or require a suspension of the rules. The suspension would make the rule a one-shot affair for the current election only; the SRoO would make it permanent.

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I rather suspect that, even in second-rate knock-off versions of RONR, it it likely one would find the same rule--that the full teller's report should be read aloud, repeated by the chair (adding the results, which is not in the teller's report). You have every right to know what version he's using, and to ask him to show you the rule he claims he's using.

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Thank you all and Mr. Stackpole for responding.

The election committee gave the results to the asst president as the president was running again for office. The asst pres gave to the secretary. I don't recall but think that the election committee chair might have or the asst pres might have( later not so important ) announced only that x, y, z won as there were 3 positions being run for. They did not tell the membership the specific tally although it is summarized on the election committee sheet.

They are saying that yes we follow roberts rules but modified although they never said in the meeting what version, etc. we follow at this meeting. When I do my research for us I follow 11th edition and they have never squawked at my answers.

They are saying that we have never published it before or told anyone the results so we should follow what we have always done...do not disclose.

My first email shows exactly our by law wording which doesn't to but doesn't say not to.

Thank you.

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They are saying that we have never published it before or told anyone the results so we should follow what we have always done...do not disclose.

Thank you.

OK.... but a convention, custom, or tradition can be overturned by either an appeal to a (previously adopted) rule (e.g. bylaws, parliamentary authority, special rule of your own) , or by just passing a (new) rule ending the convention. P. 19.

So it is up to your assembly to decide what they want -- not the presiding officer alone.

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