Kim Goldsworthy

Using only logic, I would opine, with firm confidence, that no one living today (2017 CE) will be participating in any activity of 1917. So that eliminates one candidate year. The reader is left on his own to eliminate other years. *** Q. What is "a citizen Participation plan"? Q. What is the special-ness of this document's date (of all things!)?

As far as Robert's Rules of Order's description of "votes cast", the answer is yes. *** Question: What is not a "vote cast"? Answer: An abstention. -- A voice which remains silent on a voice vote; a sitting member on a rising vote; a silent member on a roll-call vote; a paper ballot which is unmarked.

Some principles: Whenever a body meets, only the voting members of that body (e.g., board; committee; general membership; council; commission; etc.) hold rights of membership. Any non-member may be barred from that meeting. If a non-member is invited (or tolerated tacetly) to sit-in on a meeting, that non-member has no rights. -- Not to speak. Not to make motions. Permission is required for a non-member to speak in a meeting. -- That permission may be via a Suspension of the Rules, or may be via an ordinary request, as moved by a voting member.

If a party were to "wear" two (or three, or four) "hats", such as: (a.) officer (b.) member of the board (c.) X Committee chair . . . then, in theory, the party could resign from one of his positions, and retain the balance of his positions. *** Beware that some positions are tied together so that, to lose Position P1, you must simultaneously lose Position P2. • Some organizations are structured to empower the general membership to elect officers and to elect other directors of the board. (This is typical.) • Some organizations are structured to empower the general membership to ONLY elect the board, and the board members, in their first meeting, actually do the electing of each office. (See HOAs, for this common structure.) So, for some organizations, to step down from Position P1 does imply that that Position P2 is lost concomitantly. For other organizations, to step down from Position P1 does not imply that the balance of the other positions held are lost. -- There being two elections, separated by time, and separated by the body responsible.

I'd still like to see if the original poster can support this unexpected assertion: (a.) that there do exist such things as interim members of a board. (b.) that interim members of a board are empowered to vote. Certainly, Robert's Rules of Order holds no text to support this assertion. • The interim board members (!?) were not voted into office? • The "interim" label was put upon them by the president? And now you think "interim members of the board" can vote? Q. How did you come to this conclusion? What rule? What process?

Whenever the minutes of an annual meeting are at risk of waiting a full year before the minutes are approved by the appropriate body, that "appropriate body" should instead avoid the one-year dead time, and authorize a MINUTES APPROVAL COMMITTEE to do the editing ("amending") and finalizing ("approval") of the annual meeting minutes. I would not necessary charge one's board with the responsibility. The board might be the inappropriate party to approve the minutes of the general membership. (We all know of instances where the officers sitting on one's board are either suspended, expelled, or is targeted for disciplinary procedures. You wouldn't want such a person to be in charge of the minutes -- of any meeting! Thus the better solution of cherry-picking a subset of people whom you trust.)

I see that the original poster has mentioned twice in two posts this concept: ". . . and then voting under new business". I don't know where this idea came from. You won't find any such rule in Robert's Rules of Order (where you must defer any act of voting to the class of business called "new business"). -- You vote when a motion is pending. And a motion could well be pending many times well before the class of business called "new business" is reached. See "general orders". See "unfinished business". These are classes of business prior to "new business" (in the standard order of business of Robert's Rules of Order).

>> . . . no quorum was present. Since no quorum was present in your board meeting, then whatever reports were submitted in writing have not yet been officially presented. The strict by-the-book solution is: To have the reports officially submitted in the next meeting, i.e., a meeting where a quorum is present. You would want your minutes to act as a proper paper trail. If past minutes showed a report was due, then a future-dated set of minutes ought to reflect the fact that the report was indeed presented. A qurorum-less meeting implies that the board was not proper constituted, and could not receive any reports officially. -- So, the solution is, "make it official".

DUPLICATE POST

If it isn't a motion, then, chances are, it does not belong in the minutes. Rants and raves are not to appear in the minutes.

One "difference" is how the agenda item re-appears. 1.) For Lay on the Table, if you wish the Table'd item to reappear, you must move to Take From The Table. 2.) For Postpone Definitely, the very act of postponing includes the explicit hour, or date, or both, when the agenda item is to be automatically placed (again) before the meeting. 3.) For Postpone Indefinitely, the agenda item is dead. To make it re-appear, you would have to move it again, in the next meeting (technically, the next "session").

>> 8 Board members (out of the 15) have been suspended by the President. Normally, this would be impossible, under the plain application of Robert's Rules of Order. Q. Do you have rules (constitution or bylaws) which empower your president to unilaterally suspend whomever the president wishes? If not, then what makes you think the president can suspend anyone? *** >> This is the first time this happened to our society hence our bylaws do not have any provision regarding the matter. All the more reason for me to ask, "If your bylaw have no such provision, then why are you respecting an action taken by your president which is, apparently, null and void?"

I would hope your rules have a rule for FILLING VACANCIES. So, that is one way to fill the open positions. *** If removing the entire board in one sweeping enacting action is not possible, then you may consider removing them serially. -- i.e., to remove 100% of your board one board member at a time. (Alphabetical order or seniority order, it does not matter. Or start by removing them in bylaws order: President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, most-senior director, second-most senior director, etc.) As you remove each officer, you fill the vacancy, so that your board is never more than one position "down". Maybe two. ***

All statements "rule". There is no conflict within your cited rules. Q. Where do YOU see a conflict?

There are some actions which, upon a timely Point of Order, will turn: (a.) an adopted motion; into (b.) a null-and-void motion. *** There are at least three kinds of behavior which will trigger the above change: (1.) Previous notice was insufficient. -- A member(s) was/were not mailed the notice. (2.) A member(s) was/were not allowed to attend a meeting. (3.) A member(s) was/were not allowed to vote at a meeting. *** Of the above listed behaviors, there is a circumstance where (a.) the adopted motion will stand. (b.) the adopted motion will be rendered null and void. *** Given a timely Point of Order: Q. Which of the behaviors have a circumstance where the adopted motion will stand? Q. Which of the behaviors will always render an adopted motion as null and void? *** The reader may wish to review some key pages in RONR: (1.) page 252, "Remedy for violation of the right to vote". (2.) page 445, the paragraph which begins, "Otherwise, an election may be contested by . . ." and its bullet items. ***

OK. The pieces of the puzzle are coming together. Piecing together the sentences from page 252, I get this (now, anyway): • Although a Point of Order can be raised on behalf of the blocked-off member(s) . . . >> . . . the action resulting from the vote is not invalidated by a ruling in response to the point of order. A double negative implies the opposite of the verb, so • . . . "the action . . . is 'validated' . . . (no matter how the point of order is ruled upon)." Which makes me ponder about the Point of Order's "point" ("point of no return?") -- The Point of Order, no matter how it is ruled upon, won't change the result of the vote. Right? *** If that is so, then isn't improperly noticed business the same thing, as mentioned in the other thread? • If a single member is deliberately excluded from the official previous notice as mailed out, then the motion(s) resulting will stand, despite any Point of Order raised afterward by the excluded member(s), regarding the charge that [he/she/they] were excluded from the notice. Right? The Point of Order, although it can be raised, is raised to no end, other than after-the-fact acknowledgement of the exclusion. Is that about right? ***

>> 252 rules of order §23<< So! The net result will be: (a.) for those motions which were not roll call votes nor rising counted votes, the motion stands. (b.) for those motions which were voted on by non-numeric motions, like by-voice or by-rising, the motion may be declared null and void only if a point of order is raised and the number of disenfranchised voters is EQUAL TO or GREATER THAN the margin of the affirmative vote total. *** Are we agreed that #a and #b is what p. 252 implies? For ordinary voting methods applied to a motion, since there is no known margin of victory from which to calculate the swing vote influence of the barred members, such a motion shall stand.

The Book does not have a protocol for "voting via email". So you are on your own. *** If/When the parent assembly authorizes "voting via email", you have more than one way of accomplishing this end. The primary factor is, "Is secrecy of the ballot to be preserved?" If no secrecy of the ballot is to be preserved, then you have no problem, Just email your vote to the designated party (chief teller? secretary?).

The current edition (11th ed., 2011) is rather light on the process of dealing with the rare office, "president-elect". So I fear that few posts will have citations from The Book which truly cover the issue in a satisfactory manner. *** My first impression: • Fill the vacancy. *** I am glossing over all this "lack of information" complaint from your members. Whether voting members know or don't know (whatever), does not change the immediate need -- to fill a vacancy. >> . . . upset . . . not involved . . . reasoning . . . fund-raiser . . . This set of adjectives and nouns are emotional baggage which distracts from the defined parliamentary problem to be solved. No text from RONR will solve problems like "upset" and "not involved." So, fill the vacancy. -- THAT you CAN do.

I am double-clutching. -- Didn't we see a similar thread recently? I looked up the status of such an error (legitimate voting members who are barred from casting a vote) in RONR regarding an election. But an election is not the same thing as a motion. Thus my quandary -- If such an election miscue makes the election null and void, then, in this case, won't the "adopted" motion music make the motion to be null and void? (Upon a proper Point of Order, of course.) See page 445, which links to page 251. The text of interest is this: • (p. 445) If a number of members sufficient to affect the result are improperly prevented from voting in an election, action has been taken in violation of a rule protecting a basic right of the individual member. • (p. 251) d) any action has been taken in violation of a fundamental principle of parliamentary law, • (p. 251) In all such cases, it is never too late to raise a point of order since any action so taken is null and void. *** Thus RONR confirms that, for an election, a Point of Order is timely while the contested elected party sits. Q. So, what happens, upon a Point of Order for an adopted motion? Does the chair declare the "adopted" motion null and void. Or not?

It is a popular "myth" that -- the identical motion which was rejected recently (how recent?) is (somehow) prevented from being moved in a future meeting (how future?). Under Robert's Rules of Order, a rejected motion can be moved again in a new order of business (technically, a new "session"). *** A "session" may or may not imply a single meeting. -- See conventions, which are treated as one long session (i.e., one order of business), even though there are several consecutive meetings, dedicated to that single order of business. For the average monthly meeting of the average nonprofit organization, the formula is, with rare exception: 1 meeting = 1 session (or, one order of business)

A1.) No. Just being unavailable isn't a disqualification from office. Why a voter would cast a vote for such person is a puzzlement. But the voter is free to cast a vote for such a person. *** A2.) No, the office is not vacant. The office is occupied. The occupier is the party who isn't available. But, again, just being unavailable does not imply the the office is vacant. The seat is filled with someone who cannot be seen, cannot be heard, and who does not attend meetings. But until that party dies, or resigns, or is ousted from office via a disciplinary action, he continues to sit and serve. *** A3.) No. The board cannot call for a special election when the seat is still occupied by the inactive party. *** A4.) I do not see how (i.e., the board calling for a special election). The board should probably invoke the disciplinary process and remove the party from office. THEN you will have a true vacancy, which you may fill.

Ah! -- So we know the rule is NOT a "qualification for office". The rule merely makes such a device "not in order". (Nominations are not motions, technically.) Therefore, Robert's Rules of Order's description of "Suspend the Rules" would apply, and this customized rule is "in the nature of a rule of order", and is suspendable.

Yes. Remember, under executive session, the body is free to invite (or, to allow to remain present) whomever the body wishes. But, to repeat, as a non-voting party, your E.D. has no right to be present in executive session. - You won't be violating any rule in Robert's Rules to say "Please, all non-members of the board must leave the room for this agenda item." *** Now, on to a question you didn't ask, or didn't answer. It is possible that your E.D. is defined as a non-voting member of the board. That is a different kettle of fish. -- A member who has 99% of all rights of membership, except one -- the right to vote, retains all other rights. Granted, this can of worms may not apply to you. But there are organizations out there with non-voting members. And as such, gray areas develop as to what this people can do, and cannot do. Beware the difference.

> ". . . one person only . . .". Tool late. Congress, and countless state houses, do this, all the time. See the speech by Davy Crockett when he served in the House of Representatives. The speech is called "It Isn't Yours To Give". -- Congress wanted to give money to a specific woman (a widow). Davy Crockett said that to give public money to a private individual is unconstitutional, and is an immoral use of public funds. Davy lost. -- And the spigot never gets turned off.