Atul Kapur

What do you find lacking in 47:50 "During a meeting the work of the parliamentarian should be limited to giving advice to the chair and, when requested, to any other member." ? Or, if your emphasis is on the advisory aspect, 47:46 "The parliamentarian’s role during a meeting is purely an advisory and consultative one—since parliamentary law gives to the chair alone the power to rule on questions of order or to answer parliamentary inquiries."?

Under RONR, each individual member has one vote. Your organization apparently has different rules (perhaps membership is alloted to the family or household). If so, your organization will have to decide who votes on behalf of that member and may wish to have rules on what they have to do to decide how that vote is cast. Again, RONR has a basic assumption of one member = one vote. But many organizations have weighted voting and assign more than one vote to one person. A common example is a corporation where a shareholder exercises one vote for each share that they hold. Some HOAs or condominiums (strata in BC) have similar arrangements. If that is the case in your organization, look to your own governing documents and rules.

I disagree. Assume that any individual member can move to amend the bylaws and that previous notice is required. Say that I give notice that at the next meeting I will move to increase dues from $20 to $40, but between meetings realize that the increase does not need to be so much. It would be completely in order for me to actually move at the next meeting to increase dues from $20 to $35. An amendment to my motion to strike $35 and insert $40 would be in order as being within scope of notice. But there is no need for me to move an increase to $40 then move to amend my own motion to $35.

This suggests that your voting system is disconnected from the meeting itself. This is very different than from the assumptions that underlie RONR's rules on voting ("it is a fundamental principle of parliamentary law that the right to vote is limited to the members of an organization who are actually present at the time the vote is taken in a regular or properly called meeting" 25:9 and 45:56). So the applicability of RONR's rules on changing a vote will not necessarily apply to your organization and it should probably make explicit what the rules are, including any necessary or desired adaptation of the RONR rules. That being said, RONR says this about Changing One's Vote, in 45:8 It sounds like your polls have not yet closed (that is, people who have not voted are still able to do so) and the result has not been announced, so this could be a good argument to say that you can still change your vote. Or, I could be misinterpreting the whole thing.

@rulesasker appears to be confusing a couple of different situations. I respectfully suggest you ignore the post immediately above. You tell us that So all bylaw amendments require 40-day notice in your organization. (RONR has an alternative if notice is not required but this alternative does not appear to be available to your organization because your bylaws requires notice and the bylaws supercede RONR). But that does not mean that "ANY change to the proposed amendments would require another 40 day notice" The important concept is Scope of Notice. The principle is that the proposal (the bylaws amendment) cannot be amended to go beyond the change that was noticed. Let's use the example of a dues increase. If you give notice to amend the bylaws (the proposal) to increase dues by $10 a year, then at the meeting the proposal can be amended from a $10 increase to any number between zero and $10. An amendment to increase dues by > $10 or to decrease dues would be out of order because it's outside of the scope of notice. (An amendment to reduce the dues increase to zero would be out of order because it would be the same as voting against the proposal). See RONR (12th ed.) 57:11 for the full description and another example. So, to make a long story longer, If the "tweaks" or "changes" (officially called amendments to the proposed bylaws amendment) are within the Scope of Notice then you can move them at the meeting. If your current bylaws adopt RONR as your parliamentary authority, then the rules within that book are all the guidance you need.

The dilatory effect of reconsidering a sustained objection to consideration is limited -- you could even say minimal -- because this motion to reconsider is undebatable.

You will note that I have been careful to use the phrase "occupies two offices"; adding the reference to having multiple seats was an attempt to use Mr. Elsman's terminology to save him having to translate that himself. (But I have seen multiple-office holders who can spread themselves wide enough to take up two seats.)

Other than "does not have multiple seats on the board," , you are agreeing with everyone else. No one is saying that a person occupying more than one office or seat is more than one person or has more than one vote. But when you say "does not have multiple seats on the board," several of us disagree with you, because RONR explicitly says that may happen.

Close. One person, one member of the board with one vote, no matter how many offices that person occupies / seats they fill.

The question was if the person in office is unsuccessful. There is nothing in RONR that says the person has to give up their position in order to run for a position in the opposite cycle. I disagree with @Rob Elsman and say that there is nothing in RONR that requires the person to automatically resign (or be deemed to resign) their current position even if successfully elected to a different office on the opposite cycle. RONR (12th ed.) 46:31(1) explicitly allows for one individual to be elected to two different offices in the same election "unless the bylaws prohibit a person from holding both offices simultaneously" so there is no reason why the person cannot be elected to two different offices one year apart; the voters know that this person already occupies one office when they consider who to elect to the other office - the same situation as described in 46:31(1) but with a longer time between the two elections. The fundamental principle of parliamentary law in 45:2 is not violated because, even if a person occupies two offices, they would still only be able to cast one vote. (This may be a reason for some to support another candidate in the election or for the candidate to resign one of their two offices, presumably, the one with the shorter remaining term). To reinforce an important point, Guest joggingslowly, you should check your bylaws to see if they have any provisions about this situation.

Are you in the same organization as Guest callana1? If not, please start a new thread. Either way, your information is different from the OP's, please give us the exact quote from your bylaws.

I understand Guest John Blackwell to say that, if the chair created (and presumably appointed members to) a committee, could the board ratify that action following 10:54 Bullet 3? "Cases where the procedure of ratification is applicable include: action taken by officers ... in excess of their ... authority" Why couldn't the board adopt a motion, for example, "To ratify the chair's action of creating a special committee of the board to make recommendations regarding investment of the $1 million donation that we received and appointing the vice president, secretary, and treasurer to this committee." ? Guest John Blackwell, I am not at in any way recommending that the chair pursue this course of action; I'm just responding to the point raised by Mr. Novosielski.

Unless it is withdrawn, in which case it is usually not included. See 48:4(6)

Generally, it is the assembly that creates an ad hoc committee, the board for committees of the board or membership meeting for committees of the organization. This presumes that the bylaws do not specify a different method.

This is not correct. 50:8 A standing committee must be constituted by name (a) by a specific provision of the bylaws or (b) by a resolution which is in effect a special rule of order and therefore requires for its adoption either previous notice and a two-thirds vote or a vote of a majority of the entire membership, if any of the following conditions are to apply: if the committee is to have standing authority to act for the society on matters of a certain class without specific instructions from the assembly; if all business of a certain class is to be automatically referred to the committee; or if some other rule of parliamentary procedure is affected by the committee’s assigned function. 50:9 If a standing committee’s assigned function does not affect a rule of parliamentary procedure in any of these three ways, it can be established by a standing rule adopted by a majority vote without notice, although, even in such a case, the committee is frequently constituted by name in the bylaws as indicated above. If certain standing committees are enumerated in the bylaws, no standing committee aside from those enumerated can be established without amending the bylaws, unless the bylaws also include a provision authorizing the creation of additional standing committees (see also 56:44–48). ....

I think it is simpler than that. 27:1 introduces that §27 applies to "a motion relating to a single subject" 27:10-11 apply to "a series of independent resolutions or main motions dealing with different subjects is offered in one motion." If they deal with different subjects, then the division must be done on the demand of a single member, rather than by way of a motion to divide. This may require the presiding officer to use judgement to decide whether the different parts relate to the same or different subjects.

While I agree with you, Josh -- as our replies to this post have said the same things -- it would probably be less confusing to say "newly elected" rather than installed, since these two events appear to be occurring at different times and that is the source of the OP's question.

What do you bylaws say about when the terms change over? According to RONR, the installation ceremony is irrelevant; the election is effective as soon as it is final; so the new president should take over the chair as soon as they are declared elected. Some organizations say otherwise in their bylaws -- eg: the term ends with the adjournment of the annual meeting (in which case the outgoing president stays in the chair for both days) or the term ends at the installation ceremony (in which case the new president calls the meeting to order on the second day and presides over the entire day). Whatever your bylaws say overrides what is in RONR if there is a confict.

When you say "elected voting members" do you mean the elected board (or small leadership group by whatever equivalent name) of the union? Do you mean the elected delegates to a convention? I am asking because you seem to be using the term "elected voting members" to differentiate from all the members of the union, which sounds unusual for a union.

It can work any way you decide - you just have to be clear that the motion(s) say exactly what you intend to happen. Assuming that this is a one-time assessment, you could, for example, rescind the motion that created the assessment; this would eliminate the debt owed by the 1/4 (you could specify that if desired) but have no effect on the payments received from the 3/4 (the motion to rescind has no retroactive effect), so you would likely want to combine the motion to rescind with a motion to refund the payments made by those people.

If they are members of the board, yes. What makes you raise this question? Do the non-profit's bylaws say otherwise or are they unclear whether these officers are members of the board?

It would be more definitive to amend the underlying rule to eliminate the ability to interpret it the non-favoured way. Because the overturning of a precedent creates a new precedent that could itself be overturned.

I wish you had resisted the urge to add that.

Easiest is for the candidate to speak only about oneself, "I have never been convicted of theft, which is proof of my good judgement." [or proof of how good I am at it]

I don't see that a policy can prevent any such thing. A special rule could prevent some aspects of this (for example, by saying that a member cannot make or vote on a motion that results in a personal gain), but the policy would be limited to saying what the penalty is for violating it.