Jeff Hagan

Thanks. It seemed counter-intuitive because the idea of declining a nomination is so familiar.

Something that occurred to me later: would the person who made the nomination be able to undo the nomination with a request to withdraw or modify a motion?

An issue came up at our club election on Monday night. I hope you can either confirm that I handled it properly or point out where I went wrong:

During nominations for club officer elections, one member (call her A) surprised another member (call her B ) by nominating her for president.

During discussion, B said that she did not want to be president and asked to decline the nomination.

Before the meeting while reviewing RONR, I hadn't seen any way to "un-nominate" someone. Also, our by-laws don't require nominee consent when nominating from the floor. I told her that the nomination would stand, but that the members should take what she said into account when voting.

Was this correct? Is there a better way to handle this situation?

(BTW: looks like the members did take what she said to heart. She got no votes.)

I've served on a couple of not-for-profit boards in the past, but I was lucky that we had members with good experience in parliamentary procedure to rely on and the boards I was involved with generally got along, so I never had to acquaint myself with the nitty-gritty of Robert's Rules of Order.

Over the past six months or so, though, two things happened:

- I became secretary of a local club in an international organization. The club president is very inexperienced with parliamentary procedure and I've found that he relies on me for advice on these matters. I want to make sure that the advice I give is correct.

- I started working on my Advanced Communicator Gold through Toastmasters. One of the requirements is that you present an educational workshop from a set they specify. I wanted to do something that satisfied the requirements while being of benefit to the community, so I decided that I would present Parliamentary Procedure in Action (the same one Hieu mentioned) to interested board members from local charities. I don't have the knowledge to do this yet, but I'm working toward it.