Thank you for all your responses. I can usually find my answers by searching the book and then the web (often finding them here), and while I did find the statement limiting nominations to openings, I needed a bit more for this one to help the other members understand. The devil's advocate argument for what I found was that you could then not accept a nomination for any office until the current person had left.
We usually call for any nominations, of which there are almost never any nominations for positions that already have a nominee and never (that I know of) for a position that is not up for election, and then we normally accept the slate by acclimation. In the rare event that there is a runoff we hold elections by blank paper ballot and then accept the rest by acclimation. I don't believe there has been more than a handful of paper ballot votes for officers in the last few decades.
We do have specific procedures and circumstances for this, but this hasn't been done in this case. At least, not yet.
We traditionally just "open nominations", but not for specific positions. In fact, year after year our guide is just a table of all the positions, when they started, the number of terms allowed, term length, etc. and we just update the table each year. I think I'll mark that office in question as "Still Serving Current Term".
This sounds like the real reason to back up my case for not accepting the nomination.
I like the way these sound better then what I suggested.
It may be pure nonsense to RONR, but it sounds like an argument. The group is not used to doing things by-the-book, but rather only by tradition.
For some officers:
Their term of office shall be one (1) year; with a maximum of two (2) years continuous elected service in that office for the president and the vice-president and a maximum of three (3) years continuous elected service in that office for the secretary, treasurer and financial secretary.
For some other officers:
Each of these individuals will be elected for a term of two (2) years with a maximum of four (4) years (two terms) of continuous elected service in that office.
I have a gripe about our bylaws not being specific about when the term ends, but that is yet another issue. Nor do our bylaws specify how to handle considering appointments as a term (or not) of office.
Thanks!