Gary Novosielski

With the exception that a presiding non-member would not be allowed to vote, even in cases where one vote could affect the outcome.

Apart from knowing that this censure motion was on the agenda, we don't know the outcome. Were you in fact censured on the basis of such flimsy evidence?

As others have noted, a Point of Order now would no longer be timely. If a similar occasion arises, you could raise a Point of Order that the motion is not in order since it did not originate in the range committee, which should be ruled well taken, or if you wanted to be a little less confrontational you could wait for debate and then move that, in compliance with the bylaws, the motion be Referred to the range committee. If that motion failed, you could still raise the Point of Order.

I remember before I was a member of my local school board, one of the then members used to balance her checkbook during meetings. None of the other members had the nerve to say anything, because she could be unpleasant when challenged, but a member of the public stood up one night during public comment and remarked on how unprofessional she looked. She was basically shamed out of that behavior. After I was elected she was introduced (by me) to the rules of debate under RONR, which made it more difficult for her to be quite so unpleasant. This took a lot of the fun out of it for her, and she did not run for reëlection.

<never mind>

Mark, See §59:27:

Special meetings are permitted only if provided for in your bylaws, which should tell you under what conditions and by whom they can be called. A specific description of the business to be conducted at the meeting must be included in the call of the meeting. If your bylaws don't have such a provision you can conduct the election at your next regular meeting. It's worth looking into the question of why nobody at the meeting noticed and raised a point of order. Members share the responsibility to ensure the rules are being followed. It is not the responsibility of the president alone. You may have a problem at this point if the president can call meetings and you don't clearly have a president. What do your bylaws say about the term of the president. Ideally there will be a provision that officers remain in office until the election of their successors. If you have no valid president at the moment, the assembly can appoint one (a president pro-tem) to preside over the next meeting, by a majority vote. There is no law against appointing the outgoing president to do this. If the rules in RONR apply, "slates" are not used in elections, and are not voted on as a single package. While the report of the Nominating Committee is often called a "slate", it should be regarded as merely a list of nominees for the various offices, and after the report is received, the chair must call for additional nominations from the floor if any. If your bylaws require a ballot vote, then this provision may not be suspended. Each office is voted on separately--this may be done on one physical ballot, but it must be possible to vote differently for each office, not merely on a take-it-or-leave-it "slate". Additionally, space must be provided for write-in votes for each office.

I don't think so, but (worst case) a new Standing Committee can be established and the same members can be appointed to it; then the existing Special Committee can be discharged from further consideration of the question referred to it, and that question can be referred to the Standing Committee. It is going to depend primarily on how Standing Committees are established in you organization. If your current Standing Committees are listed in your bylaws, then new ones can only be added (or old ones removed) by means of a bylaws amendment.

I don't see anything in that particular language that suggests there is any appeal process.

Sure thing. Bryce, Following up: I've looked through RONR and a three-fourths vote is not a rule for the passage of any motion. There are, though, two places where a three-fourths vote is mentioned. One is in the sample bylaws, where the fictional example organization requires a three-fourths vote for admission to membership. The other is a recommendation when drafting custom rules for the Resolutions Committee of a Convention. In the rule in RONR, such committees are required to report on any resolution submitted to them, even if they do not recommend its adoption, but they aren't allowed to simply kill a proposed resolution by ignoring it. RONR says that if such a committee is given this power in the Convention's rules, a vote in the committee to do so should have a very high threshold, such as a three-fourths vote.

He was just warmin' up.

Note without commentary: The Supreme Commander of allied military forces uses the words "earned" and "refreshed", while the guy who never was a soldier but played one in the movies uses the words "fought for" and "defended".

“Independence Day: freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, and the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed – else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Are you using the same software? I'm using the download from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Digital-Services-LLC-Download/dp/B00UB76290

Well, a majority vote means more than half. So neither a 2/3 vote nor a 3/4 vote is a "majority". I would argue against a 3/4 vote for anything because this is not, in fact, a "supermajority". It is a superminority; i.e, a mere 25% of the voters can block an action overwhelmingly approved by the majority. I tend to look askance at most attempts to "improve upon" things that are already covered in RONR, for the simple reason that it is a result of well over 100 years of experience and expertise, out of which the bugs have largely been ironed.

Yes, Mr. Honemann was referring to the sample bylaws printed in RONR [56:58 et seq.], which only require three days notice.

Well, it's dangerous to try to draw a conclusion based on a paraphrase, but that sounds like a repetition of a rule already contained in RONR. That rule would normally apply only to rules of order, i.e., those rules that apply to the orderly conduct of business in the context of a meeting, but interpretation of bylaws is ultimately something left to the assembly itself.

Yes, 9:4 applies if you have no other method in your rules. And does not apply if you do. There is never any "impasse".

That's true, but if these "objections" are in the form of a Point of Order, then they would be included, however that's for objections to a violation of the rules, not just an objection to a particular policy position.

For a quick-reference that can be read in an evening, look for Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised In Brief, Third edition. It has all of the rules you'll need in 80-90% of your meetings, and where more detail is needed it refers to chapter and paragraph in RONR, 12th ed., so you don't have to search through it. RONRIB is available in print or in Kindle form.,

Then how do you know you have a board at all?

We can't comment on your specific state regulations, but I have yet to run across any that prohibited recording. RONR says that the meeting room is controlled by the body that is meeting, and that a majority vote is sufficient to allow or disallow behavior that is not otherwise addressed by your own rules. RONR suggests that a recording may be useful to the secretary in the process of drafting the minutes, but it should be understood that the recording is not the minutes. In my experience it is usually the secretary who does the actual recording. For the reasons you mentioned it would probably not be a good idea to allow the recording to circulate beyond the secretary's control. You can adopt a special rule of order to that effect, and discipline those who might violate it. In the process of approval of minutes, any member may offer a correction, and if there is not general agreement, the wording would be decided by majority vote, much like the routine handling of an amendment. The main safeguard against "twisting" the minutes is to follow the rule that the minutes are are record of what was done, and not what was said. The wording of motions made should be verbatim as stated by the chair before putting the question, and the simple fact of whether they passed or failed would seem fairly immune to twisting. Debate should not be included at all, and the secretary's opinion should never be detectable in the draft.

I'm afraid "clarify that committee refers to standing" needs clarification. RONR refers to two types of committee, standing committees, which have a continuing role in handling matters of a particular type, and special committees (aka select committees) which are established to handle a particular question and cease to exist once they rise and report. In most organizations with an executive committee, the EC, in spite of its name, is not a true committee but rather a hoard-within-a-board, a subset of the executive board. If this is not the way your organization works, please explain. It would be unusual for an EC to have an abundance of members, so again it's not clear how your organization compares with what might be called "the norm". The term "co-chair" appears to imply that such co-officers are equal in their powers and duties. But that's apparently not the case in your group. For a given committee, do you not have two co-chairs? Or do you have a chair and a co-chair? If that's the case, the confusion can be cured by having a chair and a vice-chair. In general, the use of co-offices of any kind is a recipe for regret. I can't tell what executive committee chairs means. are these committee chairs with some sort of executive power, or are these executive-committee chairs, i.e., chairs of the executive committee, of which there would seem to be only one? Is this term defined elsewhere in the bylaws?

If it were revealed who was leading in the tally, I'd agree, but merely saying what the turnout was does not strike me the same way.

If the bylaws are silent on removal, then where are you deriving the authority to remove the board member? If a board member is not made aware, for any reason, of an upcoming meeting, then the meeting would not be a valid meeting. RONR has an entire chapter (Chapter XX.) on discipline but the process is more complex than simply holding a meeting. There is an investigation performed by an investigation committee, followed by a trial. The accused has certain rights under that process. And if your bylaws don't have another way to remove a board member, then Chapter XX is what you should be using.