Drake Savory

One solution may be for the parent organization to prefer charges against the committee chair for their (non) handling of your motions to adjourn and have them removed from their chairmanship.

And of course by specifying "three year term" instead of simply serving two consecutive terms, one could argue that if a board member were appointed at any time after election that it would not count towards the limit as their term was not a full three years. Historically, a similar pedantic interpretation of the word "term" is why Andrew Johnson was acquitted of violating the Tenure of Office Act since enough Senators decided a new term started when he took office.

One threshold of voting is a majority of the membership. So let's say you have an association of Cat Sweater Knitters and each year they elect delegates to attend the Annual Conference. What would constitute a majority of the membership for votes at the AC - a majority of the whole Association or a majority of the delegates elected?

Actually Dan's response to HHH is quite appropriate. Refer to U.S. v Ballin but long story short, The House of Representatives used to count those abstaining from a vote as not counting toward the quorum of those attending.* Speaker Reed said that that was not correct - if you are there you count towards the quorum even if you don't vote. This means that the definition of a majority for voting (more than half the votes and abstentions do not count) and for a quorum (more than half of the members) while technically the same (more than half) are in practice different. If you want to see an example of this, watch a meeting where the Chair will erroneously say that a vote of 4 yes, 3 no and 2 abstain did not pass since a majority of those voting did not say yes. * So if there were a House of 200 members with 101 attending, 2 Representatives could obstruct a bill simply by not voting. The resulting vote 99-0-2 would not be valid since "a quorum was not present".

Some may. Does it make a difference?

Assuming prior notice has been given for an organization's proposed resolutions (not bylaw amendments) at the annual conference, can an amendment increase the scope of a resolution?

I had post its in different colors depending on the urgency.

I always would hand the Chair a post-it with whatever I needed to tell him and let him take it from there.

We need a Turing Parliamentarian. Hey new user name.

IF the chair participates in debate, they are limited to speaking twice only. We had a member that did the same thing the Chair in the OP did and the Chair admonished the member repeatedly but to no effect. One meeting when that member made a third comment I raised the Point of Order that they had spoken twice and were thus barred from speaking anymore to the question.

Sorry for the misinformation then. I thought Point of Order and Call to Order were separate. Shows what happens when my copy of RONR is at home.

That is not a Point of Order issue. Personal attacks are a breach of decorum and so you would ask the Chair to call the member to order or you can do it yourself under certain conditions. RONR discusses how it would escalate if the member refuses to come to order.

Thank you. I have to wait while they are revising the RP test. The live test seems interesting.

So you explain it to them with your copy of RONR handy. Although a Point of Order is not debatable you are allowed by the Chair to explain youself. Keep it simple A Point of Order is when a member believe the rules are violated. Cite the rule in RONR. Explain how it was violated. If the Chair rules the Point not well taken then Appeal the decision of the Chair.

Just to add on, I have been my organization's unofficial parliamentarian for 3 years and just now pulled the trigger and joined NAP (passed the entrance exam - yay me). All I did for the three years was buy a copy of RONR, read & highlighted (highlit?) it and asked about anything I didn't understand on this MB. Also, take note of anything unusual because even if you don't know the answer then and there you can look it up in RONR or ask about it here.

Why not study RONR and become an unofficial floor parliamentarian.

For starters buy a copy of the current Robert's Rules of Order and take it to your meetings so you can show cites. Second, when she starts making accusations rise and ask that the member be Called to Order. Depending on what support you get from the Chair this may determine your next actions.

My organization had a similar situation. There was a budget hearing required by the bylaws and it was never noticed before last year. A member of the Board wanted to invalidate the budget because of the oversight and upon researching it I realized that while there can be a continuing breach for action taken in violation of the bylaws, that NOT doing something that the bylaws requires cannot be a continuing breach (cf: Nathan Zook's reply) therefore any Point of Order about the inaction needs to be timely.

I think we need to know the original motion. Suppose committee members are appointed annually and need approval of the body and Ann, Bruce, Carmen and Dave have been on the social committee from time immemorial and by tradition they're appointments are "re-affirmed". Then the motion to re-affirm failing would have an impact, specifically that the four are not on the social committee anymore.

First things first. Was this an amendment to a motion being debated at the time or an amendment to something previously adopted?

Not only emergencies. What if you have a dictatorial Chair who only puts on the agenda items THEY want discussed? As for Mr. Brown's last point, read up on Call for the Orders of the Day.

Does it make a difference if they were really nice typewriters?

I concur. According to our bylaws an organization I belong to uses "Robert's Rules of Order, Revised" and IIRC there was some discussion here over what edition our current parliamentary authority is.

Because of a timely issue the President of our organization held a vote by email, which is not allowed by the bylaws, to meet a legal requirement that a certain expenditure is approved by the Board. The executive committee can act for the Board between meetings as well. So it seems to me that the action (spending the money) still needs to be Ratified. What I'm stuck on is what exactly needs to be ratified. Is it that action of the executive committee in spending the money since it needed approval of a larger assembly (I don't have my RONR handy but I know I read that under the motion to Ratify) and that vote was never legally taken before the money was spent or are we ratifying the vote that was taken by an invalid method because I'm not 100% sure that an invalid vote can be ratified.

should be held or must be held?