Gary Novosielski

According to RONR, the purpose of a second is to ensure that more than one person wants to consider the question. That's why seconds are not required from any committee of more than one--in order for a majority to report a motion out of committee, at least two people would have voted Yes. So it seems to me that a motion with explicit cosponsors listed on it would not require a second at all. I would consider the chair's insistence on a second to be frivolous. Or, where the authors of a motion are listed, include a line below saying Seconded by: and put one of the names there.

No, you're not. The election was not held as the bylaws require If an election is set in the bylaws for a certain meeting, then it is General Special Order for that meeting. It is the duty of the Chari, not the membership, to announce it as the next item of business at the appropriate time, to call for nominations from the floor, and to preside over the election(s). Therefore the election is incomplete and must be completed as soon as possible. As the bylaws provide that officers serve until their successors are elected, the current officers remain in office for the present, but the bylaws are being violated every day that the election is past due. When you adjourned, you should have adjourned to a specific time when the election would be in order. Since you did not, you will need to call a special meeting for this purpose, and complete the election as required. It is not the case that all the other business at that meeting was nullified by failing to hold the election, as long as it was otherwise properly considered, so all votes stand as originally announced.

That makes one of us.

The advice I would give is that if they desire to be included in the process, and have the opportunity to discuss, amend, or refer the question to a committee, they should vote No on the current proposal and make their views known on any new one. To paraphrase Frederick Douglass, if you discover the limit of what people will put up with, you then know the limit of what they will have to put up with.

I disagree. When a rule applies "unless otherwise provided <elsewhere>", then if there is a rule elsewhere, the rule does not apply. When RONR uses that language, i.e., that something must be done "unless otherwise provided in the bylaws" it is deferring to the bylaws. So by saying that the churches rule applies "unless otherwise provided in RONR" the church rule is deferring to RONR.

But why?

I concur with @Richard Brown

No, that's even more confusing. That's saying that RONR's rules override similar rules in the bylaws, but the rules in RONR say that they don't override the bylaws. It's an endless loop. Just delete that sentence. Trust me. Delete it. Put whatever special threshold rules you have in the bylaws where these special votes are stated. Do not list a default, since that's already in RONR. And do not mention RONR except in the article on Parliamentary Authority. That article should contain this one sentence: “The rules contained in the current edition of Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised shall govern the Society in all cases to which they are applicable and in which they are not inconsistent with these bylaws and any special rules of order the Society may adopt.” Of course you can replace the word Society with Church or Congregation, or however the bylaws refer to the organization. Otherwise, use it word-for-word.

Hang on, hang on. A Quorum of 13 means you need 13 present. The would not all have to vote Yes to pass a motion. Unless you have some other language elsewhere that 13 votes are required to pass anything, it just ain't so. If there were 13 present and everyone voted, you'd only need 7 votes for a majority.

Barring some odd regulation in your bylaws, I think not. The term ex officio means "arising out of the office", i.e., the person is a member because of the other office or position they hold. If they no longer hold the office, for whatever reason, they stop being an ex-officio member. But the devil may be hiding in the details.

That's true, but there never was such a thing as "tie-breaking" except in various bylaws that apparently copied the rule of the U.S. Senate which give the Senate President (i.e., the US Vice President) a vote only in the case that the votes shall be "equally divided". In the rules of RONR, ties don't need to be "broken"; they simply defeat the motion, just as surely as if everyone voted No. Passage requires a majority, and a tie vote is less than a majority. <mic drop>

I think the not hole swallowed a word. Yeah, I wasn't sure whether to call it that or not. But I did assume that there was sufficient motivation to get this thing done, so that a quarterly time interval would not start to loom. I think it's close enough to being a recount that sticking to those rules would be proper.

There's no rule in RONR that sets any time period. You can vote to change it back at any time, as long as you follow the rules for bylaws amendment that are (probably) in your bylaws now. And that may be where the snag, if any, is, because it could require n days previous notice, or other requirements.

No, that's not clear, and I was getting the feeling that it might apply to both, which is why I offered two separate recommendations. I'm half wondering if the number 13 is really there, or if it's the result of some math being done at some point, and misremembered as the actual rule.

Does the bylaws committee have more than one member? If not, majority agreement in the committee would be required before any amendments could be proposed. To which body does the bylaws committee report? If it reports directly to the membership, which would be typical, then the board has no role in this process, except as the bylaws may provide, so you'll have to check to see what rules are in there. If the committee reports to the board, then the board would automatically get that report without asking for it. But if the bylaws committee reports to the membership, andthe board does not agree on the proposed changes, then when it is presented to the membership for consideration, they can presumably vote against it as individual members, or take such other options as are open to any member.

And if it has been stated but not yet debated, a motion of Objection to the Consideration of a Question ( §26) is in order. It does not require a second, and needs a two-thirds vote against consideration to sustain the objection. And of course there is the time-honored traditional method of simply voting the motion down.

You need to answer @Joshua Katz's question: whether the bylaws say that elections are to be held by ballot vote. If ballot votes are required, then this rule cannot be suspended for any reason, not even to save a little money. And write-in votes must be allowed on the ballot unless the bylaws explicitly prohibit them. If ballot votes are not required, or if there is an exception for uncontested seats, then the chair announces that the single candidate for the office is "elected by acclamation". There is no additional process, and therefore no opportunity for write-ins, and there is definitely no single vote by the secretary or anyone else. In the latter case, if you object to the single candidate being elected, your only course of action, in the absence of write-ins, is to nominate someone else to compete for that office. By the way who is "the org" who decided to save money, if not the membership? Was this the result of some vote somewhere by some body with the authority to change the election rules? Is there any actual meeting of the membership where you could move to have all the offices elected by ballot? This would require a second, and a majority vote. So, the two questions: What do the bylaws say about ballots, and is there a meeting before the election?

Yes, that's correct. And I agree it's most unusual for a president to be a non-voting "member" of the board. But it, as the kids say, is what it is. I hope that somewhere it provides that you preside at the board meetings.

Not at all. We quite enjoyed it.

Perish forbid!

Yes, they can make a motion. And by the way, they can vote, too, unless your bylaws explicitly says they can't. Go to our FAQ page and look at FAQ #2.

No it doesn't say anything of the kind. For most votes, it says a majority. What you should do is find that part of the bylaws where the 13 votes is specified, and delete that rule. No need to change it to anything, just delete it. Then RONR will be controlling, and the default vote threshold in RONR for ordinary main motions is a majority. Once you have found out where that change needs to be made, also check the procedure for changing your bylaws. If that says 13 votes is needed, change it to "a two-thirds vote". But in order to do either of these changes, you have to follow the current rules as listed in your bylaws for their own amendment.

If a change to the bylaws requires a two-thirds vote, as it almost always does, then changing "something" to "so-and-so" requires a two-thirds vote.

RONR has no opinion on the subject, except to say that recordings of meeting can never take the place of the official minutes. So you can decide for yourselves what works for your society.

No. If in an election for any office, no candidate receives a majority (presumably there were more than two candidates) then the election is not yet completed. Vote counts are announced and a second ballot is taken. If the assembly wishes to do so, nominations can be reopened between rounds. Also, one or more candidates might voluntarily withdraw. The process is repeated for subsequent ballots until someone achieves a majority.