Gary Novosielski

I don't think I'd put it that way. I'd say that such rules are necessary when the assembly does not agree with the clear guidance in RONR and wishes, for whatever reasons, to depart from it. Such is their right.

I agree that a special rule could authorized STV. I agree with Dan, however, that STV does not violate one-person-one-vote.

Well, if that choice is eliminated.

I'm not clear on whether this is a standing committee that is proposing a change to the organization's bylaws; or, a standing committee's bylaws are being changed by... somebody? Mr. H.H.H. has assumed the former, and he's justified in doing so because committees rarely have their own bylaws; but, reading the title and original post, something makes me wonder. What say you, Queen24?

RONR doesn't address this specific situation, but the association can certainly decide on the rules for how its newsletter is run. Who authorized the newsletter and its expenses in the first place? Who appointed the person who puts it together? Who sets the deadline now? Specifically, was it the association (in general assembly), or the board? Look up in the appropriate minutes for any motions regarding this newsletter, and see if there were any restrictions or powers established at the time. If you like them, follow them. If you don't like them, follow them until you can change them. If there aren't any, establish some.

Unless absentee voting is authorized in the bylaws (presumably with some rules on how secrecy will be assured), the organization cannot properly issue absentee ballots, collect them, count them, or act on the results. So, no, they should not be considered. Furthermore, RONR strongly advises against any method that counts absentee votes along with in-person votes.

That kinda is what "president" means. Except, of course, in the U.S. constitution, where the President has no assembly to preside over.

If you want to be highly particular about who becomes a member, you can do what some societies do, and require that prospective members be voted in by the existing members. Some particularly exclusive societies provide that a prospective member can be "blackballed" by a single negative vote. Of course this, or any other limitation on membership or voting rights would have to be done through a bylaws amendment.

If the assembly in concerned about this possibility, it can require that the reading of minutes be accompanied or replaced by a prior written draft, or that the reading of the minutes and any corrections offered must include verbalization of all punctuation marks. This can also be done on particular motions by requiring that they be submitted in writing and copies made available, either on a case-by-case basis where the need appears unusually great, or as a Special Rule of Order, applying to all motions or all minutes, or both. Without question, the secretary has no authority to change words or punctuation except under the direction of the assembly. And punctuation can be important, as we all know. Compare: Let's eat, Grandma. Let's eat Grandma

Agreed that this cannot be imposed. But I don't see how you're being deprived of choice. Your vote would be counted for Philadelphia unless Philadelphia ended up in last place. When there is virtually no chance PHL will win, the question becomes, do you have a second preference, or would you rather have no voice at all for the remainder of the selection process? I'm not pushing STV, Borda, or any other preference voting. There is no perfect voting method--it's a question of what deficiencies you are willing to put up with. My first choice would be the method in RONR. But one of its drawbacks is that the process can take an arbitrarily long time to complete. If that's a disqualifying factor in certain situations, it's good to have an alternative method or two in the toolbox.

On the contrary, with STV your vote is repeatedly counted for the same candidate, unless and until that candidate is eliminated.

Unless you count prohibiting such conduct.

One of the names for this method is Single Transferrable Vote (STV). If your first choice candidate is eliminated, your vote for that candidate is removed and transferred to your second choice. Your vote never counts for more than one person at any one time, and counts for at most one person at the end. It shares these characteristics with the RONR method. In fact, I think a case could be made that STV is at least as "one-person-one-vote" as the multiple ballot method, where each person can vote an arbitrarily large number of times.

I don't think it does either, because after the mathematical manipulations are applied and the process completed, a member ends up having cast no more than one vote for one candidate for a given office. I think that a persuasive argument could be made that this is not necessarily the case for a Borda Count and some other methods.

Bylaws cannot "implicitly" provide for expulsion for non-payment of dues. They would have to explicitly provide that, since RONR says explicitly that a member's rights cannot be abridged solely on the basis of a failure to pay dues, unless the bylaws say so

No, the procedure for amending the language of the bylaws must be followed, whatever the reason for the change. The only exception is that when multiple sections are inserted, the secretary may be authorized to renumber the sections to preserve the overall order. Note well that this is not a change in the language.

I don't think we can agree on the first point without a definition on how "official" this needs to be. I have seen more than one set of bylaws that provide that individuals can submit proposed amendments to the bylaws committee directly, without moving them first in the general assembly. I agree that a casual mention in an elevator of a nice idea for a bylaws change would not qualify as a submission, but i think the same idea put into written form and sent to the committee for consideration should be considered and reported out, unless the committee is empowered to ignore submissions it does not favor.

So far, I have seen no clear evidence that the election results should be in question. You say you "have determined" that the election must be re-done, but have presented no convincing argument that this is actually the case. Do the bylaws actually grant you this extraordinary power? Perhaps this individual did not follow the rules to get on the ballot in perfect detail, but apparently he did get on the ballot, and apparently a majority voted for him. That suggests that he was, in fact, elected, as long as he is eligible to hold the office. What if he had filed no application whatsoever yet achieved a majority of votes as a write-in candidate? I'm not convinced that failure to complete the application process perfectly should disqualify someone who already got majority approval, especially on the pronouncement of one individual. It's possible that the bylaws provide that this is the case, but if so, I haven't seen enough to agree with that.

This points out once again the significant difference between "objecting", by saying you don't like something and raising an actual Point of Order. The latter stops business in its tracks until the question of a rules violation is dealt with by an actual ruling which, if unfavorable, is appealable to the entire assembly. The former merely elicits the response "Thank you for sharing," if that.

Found? Found where? Unless if was "found" in the ballot box, it sounds pretty questionable. For all we know, someone filled it out, decided not to cast it, and threw it on the floor. Or perhaps it was filled out by someone not eligible to vote, who was not permitted to cast it, and instead threw it on the floor. Whether the ballot should be accepted or not is up to the body that did the voting.

The duties in RONR are pretty limited, and refer mainly to meetings. It's expected that additional administrative duties will be laid out in the bylaws. Such duties as are prescribed can be found in Chapter XV.

I'm sure there are, but I think that in condominium and homeowner associations, board members are more in the role of representatives of a constituency, and as a class these organizations are more likely to benefit from transparency. So, in general, I'd recommend that their bylaws contain reasonable limitations on the use of executive session, provide for the routine use of roll-call votes, and making board meeting minutes available to general members.

It's not a departure from the norm, it is the norm, i.e., that any committee is restricted to making recommendations to the parent body on matters referred to it, unless it was explicitly established with power. Even a committee to which certain classes of business are automatically referred does have power to finally decide any questions unless explicitly authorized to do so. The norm is that a committee cannot enact, nor can it kill, a matter referred to it for consideration. Giving a committee power to act must be by explicit act of the parent body (and in the case of a board, of the "grandparent" body). If the bylaws committee has the sole power to bring proposals to the floor, members have no alternative path. Unless explicitly authorized to kill proposals referred to it, a committee normally does not have this power. It presumably would have the power to report the proposal with a recommendation that it be defeated, or report it without recommendation, but if it merely fails to report it, the committee assumes to itself power to finally dispose of the proposal without recourse, which is a power not normally granted to any committee, standing or special, except by specific provision.

The motion to Reconsider could be used. This may be moved only by someone who voted on the prevailing side of the original motion. In your question, if the motion originally failed, someone who voted No could make the motion to reconsider at the same meeting. At the next meeting, there are no restrictions on renewing a motion that failed.

Committees report to their parent body, from which the matter in question was presumably referred, and which presumably has the power to act on a motion as a result of that report. What we need to know is whether this was a committee of the membership, or a committee of the EC, and whether the EC has the power to deal with such matters. If the matter must be decided by the membership, I question whether this is in fact a committee of the membership, which shouldn't be reporting to the EC to begin with. But the definitive answer may be buried somewhere in your bylaws, rather than in the pages of RONR.