Dan Honemann

You should announce (when appropriate) that motions and resolutions are "adopted" (or “agreed to” or “carried”). You should announce (when appropriate) that minutes are "approved". That's about it.

Yes, a two-thirds vote is required.

Well, take heart. A two-thirds vote will be needed in order for your board to adopt any such rule limiting debate. Unless your bylaws expressly say otherwise, your board does not have the authority to adopt a special rule of order limiting debate because such a rule will conflict with a rule in the parliamentary authority adopted by your association (see 49:15 in that 12th ed. of yours). It can adopt such a rule to last for one of its current sessions only, or for any part thereof, or for any pending question, but a motion to do any of these things will require a two-thirds vote for its adoption (43:16-17).

As far as the rules in RONR are concerned, the answer to your question is no, discussion should not appear in the minutes of a meeting.

"To accomplish their work, voluntary societies that have an enrolled membership generally need a provision in their bylaws establishing a relatively small quorum—considerably less than a majority of all the members. In most such organizations, it is rarely possible to obtain the attendance of a majority of the membership at a meeting. Sometimes the specification of a quorum is based on a percentage of the membership; but such a method has the disadvantage of requiring recomputation and may lead to confusion—for example, when the secretary, or other officer who is in a position to certify as to the current number of members for purposes of the percentage calculation, is absent. There is no single number or percentage of members that will be equally suitable as a quorum in all societies. The quorum should be as large a number of members as can reasonably be depended on to be present at any meeting, except in very bad weather or other exceptionally unfavorable conditions." RONR (12th ed.) 40:3

Why not the CD ROM referred to above?

Well, I can't resist noting that the term "actionable item" appears nowhere in RONR, and it seems to be a rather unfortunate term to use in this connection. It appears to be inviting a lawsuit.

Previous Question cannot be applied to an individual paragraph, period.

No, I suppose not. Your suggested motion appears to be similar to the one described in 15:19(b).

But how does this mesh with the rule that the motion to limit debate must first be applied to the immediately pending motion?

I suppose it would be in order, while considering a particular paragraph, to move to suspend the rules that interfere with immediately ending debate on that paragraph, but I do not think the rules can be suspended to order a vote on it. I think this would violate the rule that only one motion can be considered at a time.

Is this in order?

I don't think that one can come to this conclusion simply by reading the snippets from the bylaws which have been provided. These snippets need to be seen in the context in which they appear.

When a proposal is being considered seriatim, the paragraphs or sections within it are considered individually, one-by-one. During consideration of each individual paragraph, that paragraph is open to debate and amendment, but it does not constitute a separate question, and no vote will be taken on it. Motions to order the Previous Question or to Limit or Extend Limits of Debate can be applied only to pending motions. It is for this reason that motions to order the Previous Question or to Limit or Extend Limits of Debate can be applied to proposed amendments to the paragraph under consideration, or to the entire document, but not to the paragraph under consideration.

No, I would just like to know what happened. All that we know is that a vote was taken and immediately, somehow or another, "deemed null and void".

Yes, the minutes should reflect exactly what occurred. You say that, immediately after the vote, the proposal and vote was deemed null and void. The minutes should also reflect exactly what action was taken by the assembly to make this determination. What action was taken by the assembly to make this determination?

I think you are now simply indicating that you don't think that the rule in RONR should be what it is. That's okay. What I object to is someone insisting upon a misinterpretation of a rule in RONR.

It took more than minority to decide to create this order of the day.

No. The adopted agenda becomes the order in which business is to be conducted, it isn't itself an order of the day. Each item on it, however, is an order of the day.

RONR (12th ed.) 41:32 tells us that: "... The special rule of order establishing a consent calendar may provide that, when the matters on the calendar are called up, they may be considered in gross or without debate or amendment. Otherwise, they are considered under the rules just as any other business, in which case the 'consent' relates only to permitting the matter to be on the calendar for consideration without conforming to the usual, more onerous, rules for reaching measures in the body. What, exactly, do your bylaws or special rule of order provide with respect to your consent calendar?

Thank you. I flubbed that one.

I think it possible that you have in mind the discussion in this thread in which it was noted that adoption of a motion such as the one described in 15:19(b) does not mandate that debate continue until the time prescribed for closing debate. It simply orders that debate shall not be allowed to continue beyond that time. The difference between that situation and this is that the adoption of a motion such as the one described in 15:19(b) does not create an order of the day. We are here dealing with a situation in which adjournment has been made an order of the day.

Then how are the alternates to be elected?

I still don't understand this. What distinguishes "vanilla" rules from other rules? And again, why in the world would you suggest using the complicated, multi-motion process you suggest using, especially since you don't think it will work?

Sorry about that. 😀 I simply don't understand this at all. When such questions are asked, why not suggest moving to suspend the rules which interfere with prohibiting any amendment? Why do you see a need to suggest doing it in your extraordinarily convoluted solution?