Atul Kapur

Unless your bylaws say otherwise, only members of that particular committee have the right to attend its meetings. So, they would be the only ones who have the right to be notified.

Just focussing on the question of the signature, I have seen this with several corporations. I recommend you look at the law that applies to your Association to see if there's anything about this requirement in there.

That seems at least a bit unbalanced, in the sense as used in: "PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING PARLIAMENTARY LAW The rules of parliamentary law found in this book will, on analysis, be seen to be constructed upon a careful balance of the rights of persons or subgroups within an organization’s or an assembly’s total membership. That is, these rules are based on a regard for the rights: • of the majority, • of the minority, especially a strong minority—greater than one third, • of individual members, • of absentees, and • of all these together." and the definition of the will of the assembly "Ultimately, it is the majority taking part in the assembly who decide the general will, but only following upon the opportunity for a deliberative process of full and free discussion." RONR (12th ed.) p. xlix

That type of protection only goes so far. On a completely unrelated topic, I hope all of you believers in democracy have voted or made plans to vote on Tuesday.

Yes, true. And in that case, it should only require the 2/3 vote.

My point was that, depending on the detail in the options, filling blanks could be considered by the assembly if they felt it was reasonable. After being chastened by Mr. Honemann's remarks, I still must express surprise at Mr. Zook's assertion that amending is more flexible than filling blanks. Well, debate can occur and suggestions can be made concurrently. The opportunity to make suggestions is until a vote is taken, and that only occurs "[w]hen no further suggestions are offered, and there is no further debate" RONR (12th ed.) 12:99 How is this different from amending? If "firetruck" is voted on as an amendment and inserted before "red" there will be no opportunity to propose "rose red" without reconsidering the vote on "firetruck." SImilarly if "red" is adopted as the chosen colour. I'm not sure how this is effectively different than the alternative method. Once the assembly votes for single-elimination, it is too late to propose a double-elimination format. There is another book that uses a process that would answer your criticism, but that's outside the purview of this forum.

There are a limited number of options that could still reasonably be dealt with by the mechanism of filling blanks. For example, Single-elimination with seeding vs Single-elimination with random allocation. The assembly can decide if this is reasonable for itself by deciding on the incidental motion to create a blank.

There's nothing in RONR that will permit this. The purpose of notice is to allow members to decide whether they wish to attend the meeting to express their views and vote on the measure in question. The rights of members who are not present at the first meeting are violated if you vote at the same meeting where notice was provided.

Let's ask Guest Chairperson to give us a more clear question in a new thread.

RONR, by using the word "among" clearly states that this list is not exhaustive. I think that the only issue that determines whether filling blanks works is whether amendments to the formats are allowed, if not you are just choosing between them. The specification is "which format." Proposals could be a round-robin tournament with no playoff, a single-elimination tournament with seeding, a double-elimination tournament, etc. It doesn't need to be made overcomplicated.

I don't follow your logic. I have, as a member of a board, often asked questions about the treasurer's report. Why does that lead you to suspect the OP is not a member of the board?

You could do a variation of Filling a Blank. That would allow you to choose between A and B. Then you vote on whether the preferred option replaces C. The motion would be That we replace the current tournament format with Format ___." Formats A and B are proposed to fill the blank. Debate and a vote occur. They are voted on in order proposed and the first one to get majority support fills the blank. Then you vote on whether to adopt the, now completed, motion: That we replace the current tournament format with Format [A or B] If adopted, that's your new format. If not adopted, then you're sticking with the current one. An alternative, expanding on Mr. Martin's post, is to propose a motion to replace current format with Format A. Someone can move to substitute Format B for Format A. That allows the assembly to discuss the merits of both proposals and either of the formats could be amended to improve them (maybe even stealing parts of the other format) before the decision is made.

This is true under RONR, as J. J. said, above. You should check your bylaws to see if they say anything about resignations; some say that they are effective once received, without requiring that they be accepted. That would make your situation more difficult, but you should check and confirm.

It is definitely allowed. The Chair does not need to step down from the Chair to present their report. RONR has a standard Order of Business, which includes as the second item: Reports of Officers, Boards, and Standing Committees. The President's Report is usually the first of the Officer's Reports. You mention Chapters 1 and 4, which suggests to me that you are looking at Robert's Rules online. The problem is that is the 4th edition, published in 1915 (and therefore in the public domain). The current edition is the 12th, which was just published in August. In it, the usual order of business is in Section 41 and Reports is in 41:13-14

Note that you don't have to wait for the current individual to finish their term before amending the bylaw. You would just have to adopt the amendment with a motion that states "and this amendment will be effective as of [pick the last date of the term]"

Although those are two different questions (so people who disagree with your interpretation of the rules may support a suspension of those rules), I think that, realistically, if the appeal fails it would be unlikely that you'd get a 2/3 vote to suspend the rules. Depending on the exact wording of the bylaws, yes this could be a reason for the chair to properly reject the proposals/motions.

I agree with Mr. Honemann that there are no minutes to be approved for this improperly called meeting (and on everything else he says above). However, the sentence indicates that there may be a common misunderstanding. Assume that this was a properly called meeting (call it "Meeting A). At Meeting B, all you are doing by approving the minutes of Meeting A is saying that the minutes are a correct record of what happened at Meeting A. The motions passed at Meeting A are effective as soon as they are adopted. The organization does not have to wait until the minutes of Meeting A are approved in order to act on the motions passed there.

It would have to be stated in the bylaws. "In some organizations, the president is . . . ex officio a member of, all committees (with the exception of the nominating committee, which should be expressly excluded from such a provision, and with the further possible exception of all disciplinary committees; see 56:47). But only when he is so authorized by the bylaws—or, in the case of a particular committee, by vote of the assembly—does he have this authority and status. As an ex-officio member of a committee, the president has the same rights as the other committee members, but is not obligated to attend meetings of the committee and is not counted in determining the number required for a quorum or whether a quorum is present." RONR (12th ed.) 47:20

Wow, you guys are all way too successful if you don't acknowledge that people or organizations don't always succeeds at meeting their object (as defined by Merriam-Webster "3a: the goal or end of an effort or activity : purpose, objective"). Personally, I often do "not fulfill" my objectives, with no motion required. There is no constitutional amendment required. The board could adopt a motion acknowledging that they are unable to present a parade and ball. I don't think such a motion conflicts with the object. The board could seek a motion to ratify their decision at the next meeting of the assembly.

It sounds like the nearest parliamentary procedure is the motion to Commit. The president effectively referred the motion to the Finance Committee. If no one objected (by raising a point of order) at the time, then it was done without objection. The proper procedure from here would be to have the Finance Committee consider the motion and come back to the board with a recommendation. If the president's purpose was to "bury" the motion, then the Finance Committee is unlikely to report back. If they do not, then the proper motion would be to Discharge a Committee (Section 36) to take the motion out of the committee's hands and place it back on the board's agenda.

There's a lot going on here. If you feel rules are not being followed, then you can raise a point of order. If the ruling is against you, then you can appeal from the decision of the chair. This appeal needs to be seconded and requires a majority vote to overturn the chair's ruling. This is something that you want to discuss with other members to ensure that there will be someone to second your appeal and that others will understand what you're doing and participate. Otherwise you take the risk that the other members will vote to support the chair just because they are unfamiliar with what you are doing.

Committees, whether standing or special, may have subcommittees. I assume that a standing committee could have a subcommittee that is of a standing nature. For example, I have seen a governance committee have a nominating subcommittee.

This is a question about the application of Washington State law, is it not? That being said, I don't think the committee is being "born again" at this organization meeting. It's still the SomeCounty OneParty Central Committee. [This is not and is not purported to be legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. In fact, it's probably best that you forget you even read it. Move along, nothing to see here.]

While I was looking up the reference to support Mr. Brown's statement, I came across this paragraph instead: "When the minutes are approved, the word Approved, with the secretary’s initials (or the signature of the chairman of the approving committee) and the date, should be written below them. If the minutes are approved with corrections, the secretary should prepare a fully corrected version and distribute copies to the members as well as placing it in the minute book." RONR (12th ed.) 48:14 (emphasis added) This is a change from the language in the 11th edition: "A draft of the minutes of the preceding meeting can be sent to all members in advance, usually with the notice. In such a case, it is presumed that the members have used this opportunity to review them, and they are not read unless this is requested by any member. Correction of them and approval, however, is handled in the usual way. It must be understood in such a case that the formal copy placed in the minute book contains all corrections that were made and that none of the many copies circulated to members and marked by them is authoritative (see also p. 355)." RONR (11th ed.) p. 474, lines 19-29 (emphasis added)

I will answer this one point. The motion is not "on the floor" until the chair states the motion. However, as I said above, this does not mean that someone else has an opportunity to jump in with their own motion ahead of the committee presenting its recommendations. It sounds like you are considering having a discussion on the subject and then, after some discussion of unknown length, someone generating a motion to reflect the consensus of the discussion. While this is common, RONR is clear that the discussion will be more focussed and efficient if you start with a motion and debate it, with amendments being used to improve it and make it more acceptable to a larger number of the members present. With a large group (> 30 you said) and with a virtual meeting, the differences in efficiency are even larger.