Gary Novosielski

Agreeing with Mr. Katz, I would add that you certainly can make an announcement regarding the departure of a member whose term is ending. You could even write up a Resolution with a few Whereases and such thanking the member for faithful service or whatever. Heck, you could even buy 'em a gold watch if you can get a majority vote. And yes, those who wish to continue for another term will have to run again, perhaps with some competition.

Agreeing with all of @Josh Martin's reply, I would add that your understanding is not quite right. Anyone who is a member at a meeting at which minutes are being approved has the right to participate fully in the approval process of the minutes, notwithstanding their absence, or even their non-membership during that prior meeting. If you are a member now, you can offer corrections for any meeting past or present. If you are not a member now, you cannot participate in the approval of a meeting even if you attended and were a member then.

t is important to get rid of the no-write-ins rule. And nominations should be permitted right up to the last minute at the election meeting, as RONR would have it. In a crisis situation where the nomination process has failed, you could use blank slips of paper and simply have people write down a name. The nomination process in RONR is intentionally simple, flexible, and forgiving. For example, it takes a two-thirds vote to close nominations, and only a majority to (re)open them.

Well, I guess you have to nominate somebody else. If your nominations were done by a Nominating committee, they should reconvene and find a replacement or two. If your bylaws have hamstrung the election process to the point that nobody can be elected secretary, it may be time to establish a Bylaws committee to revise them. The portions of my previous answer that are not superseded by your bylaws still apply.

You don't have a "vacancy" as such, you have an incomplete election. And it's not possible to "decline" a nomination--one can only decline an office that one has just been elected to. So they could not both decline; only the one who won the election could have declined. You did hold the election, didn't you? Did you have space on the ballot for write-ins? It is technically possible to temporarily fill the "vacancy" that occurs when the election has failed to fill an office. But such a position lasts only until a permanent candidate is elected, so you still have the duty to complete the election without delay. So this provision is not as useful as it seems. Why would someone who refused the office through a membership election suddenly turn around and accept it if elected by the board instead? If there is such a person, nominate and elect them normally.

That's your answer. Whatever misadventures happened ten months ago did not have the effect of changing the bylaws.

Your question actually has two separate parts: If your Chairman/Vice-Chair relationship is different from a typical President/Vice-President relationship in name only, then your Vice-Chair has already become Chairman of the Board, and the vacancy that needs to be filled is in the office of Vice-Chair. When both the primary and vice-primary officers of any assembly are both absent, the secretary (or in the secretary's absence, any member) calls the meeting to order and immediately holds an election for a president pro-tempore to preside for that meeting. If the secretary is also absent, the president pro-tem, as a first item of business holds an election for a secretary pro-tem.

So the answer will hinge on how much "full power and authority" differs substantially from "general supervision". If the board has the former then it can fill vacancies. If the latter is a lesser level of power and authority then it may not have that power, and if not, an election by the membership (council?) will be required.

Okay. Still waiting for information on powers of the board, if any. Why is this so difficult?

Shhhhh! 🤫

I don't know. It depends on what your bylaws say about whether you have a board and what its powers are. Reread all of @Josh Martin's replies carefully. The language that clearly states how officers are elected is often superseded by other procedures for filling partial-term vacancies.

RONR does not state that. It states the opposite. In RONR's rules, no one is elected with less than a majority vote. And a second-place "runner up" could not have achieved a majority. Yes, the membership did make their voice heard on that issue, and the answer was No. But a rule that says "all officers are elected" does not apply to the office of president, or affect the automatic succession to that office as @Josh Martin has cited, unless the bylaws have an express provision for the president in particular.

If your offices are listed in your bylaws (and I'm not sure where else they would be) then the way to add new offices, or increase the number of existing ones, then the way to do that is by bylaws amendment. A simple motion would not be enough. And yes, I believe an election would be required if that's how the current Sgt@Arms got there. If this person was put into this position improperly, you'll need to fix things. But that's not to say that you have to change the bylaws to allow additional people to volunteer for security duty. One Sgt@Arms could surely supervise a few assistants.

It does not violate any rule in RONR. That does not make it a good idea. Even if it did, it would not make a meeting invalid. The president should not have agreed, in my view. I've been in that same situation and when nobody volunteered, I simply waited. I've never seen it take more than a minute for someone to crack, and agree to take minutes. I have had to point out that RONR requires a recording officer be present, and I did not point out that I could have served in that role because I had no intention of accepting it. I have pointed out that I was only looking for someone to take notes, not to paint the building. It's not exactly backbreaking labor.

That strikes me as odd. I have always pronounced it PRESS-uh-dense. Which is the preferred pronunciation in all the reference sources I could find, with a minority listing Gen. Robert's pronunciation as an alternate. This includes British sources which was briefly a theory of mine for what the origin might be. I doubt I will ever change the way it sounds in my head if I read it in print. I wondered if perhaps the General's variant was of military origin, from the Army Corps of Engineers, but that's at odds with my own experience in the Army Signal Corps, where message precedence (e.g. Routine [R], Immediate [O], Flash [Z]) was always pronounced as PRESS-uh-dense. But I guess it's possible for things to change over the span of what was, even then, the better part of a century. So, in the experience of those here, is the General's pronunciation commonly considered the "official" pronunciation in parliamentary circles? And if so, what of the notion of setting a precedent? Surely it's not pronounced Pree-SEE-d'nt? Actually that would make sense, since it it would be less likely confused with president, a term which arises frequently in those same circles.

Yes, it must be somewhere. And if that somewhere is in a law or regulation that says the meetings shall be held, then casually canceling them is not an option. It will be necessary to have two people show up, call the meeting to order, adjourn, and file the brief minutes.

Does anyone actually pronounce precedence as pree-SEED-n’s? [5:8n2]

Presuming the Appeal is seconded (where seconds are required).

I have learned never to underestimate the willingness of members to waste the assembly's time beyond all reason.

Yes, I don't disagree, but given the choice of convening with or without a quorum we simply chose with. All the "absentees" were already assembled in the Library, so they were in no position to make a fuss without looking silly.

Those who are members at the time of Reading and Approval of Minutes my participate fully in the process, whether they were present, or even members, at the prior meeting in question. In the unusual case where a committee takes minutes, the rules for approval would be the same as for an assembly. When the minutes have been read, or reading has been waived, the chair asks, "Are there any correcttions to the minutes?" Corrections are handled as amendments to the draft minutes, and are often agreed to by unanimous consent, but in the case of dispute, a majority vote decides whether the correction is agreed to. All memers may vote. No vote is taken on final approval. Once there are no (further) corrections, the chair announces that the minutes are approved. Non-approval is not an option. The only way to object to the contents is to offer a correction.

No, you do not understand correctly. If there was a four-way tie on the first ballot, and one person dropped out, that name may be deleted from the second ballot, but the election is not complete yet. There may be write-ins on the second ballot that will affect the result. In fact, the name that was deleted may still be written in.

There were 40 ballots cast, unless some of them were blank or marked Abstain, or otherwise indicated no preference for any candidate, which would subtract from that number. A ballot with one or more votes for the multi-seat position is counted as one ballot cast. So if the count is 40, then any candidate requires 21 votes for election.

I read that several times and I'm still not certain what it means. But in general, if things are done that are not authorized, that is bad. Are you saying you never adopted a rule to use consent agendas/consent calendars?

Since that spelling goes back to Middle English, it would be considerably earlier than yesterday.