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Our rules say that if an officer resigns and there's a vacancy, we should hold a special election at the next meeting immediately following the announcement of the vacancy. Our rules also say that the Nominating Committee must present their report at the meeting before the election, or it is invalid and all candidates must run from the floor. This makes sense during a normal election, but clearly in this scenario where the special election must take place so soon, it does not allow the Nominating Committee time to fulfill this request since they would've had to deliver the report at the same meeting as the announcement of the vacancy. When organizations hold a special election to fill an officer vacancy like this, is it common that there will be no Nominating Committee report and all candidates will run from the floor? Thank you!

Thank you!

Just so we're all on the same page, Zoom is teleconferencing software that allows participants to vote electronically during the virtual meeting via a poll. Our rules allow for these virtual meetings. Are the following correct? A vote should not be conducted via an anonymous Zoom poll unless the assembly votes to do it that way or the bylaws call for voting by ballot. If an anonymous Zoom poll was used to vote, it would be valid unless someone objects to it. If someone objects to it, the vote should not be conducted by anonymous Zoom poll unless the assembly votes to do it that way or the bylaws call for voting by ballot. Without a decision or bylaw rule to conduct the vote via ballot, by default the votes aren't supposed to be secret and any member could call for division of the assembly to closely see how each member votes. Thank you!

Thank you!

Our executive committee consists of the president, several VPs, secretary, treasurer, sergeant at arms, and former president. The organization's constitution gives each of the VPs a rank (second ranking officer, third, fourth) and none of the other roles listed specify a rank. Is it possible to create an org chart of the executive committee or is it not appropriate in this scenario? The reason I'm having trouble with this is because it doesn't say anywhere in the rules that anyone specifically reports to the president. Also, the president isn't really granted much special authority. The other positions are elected by the general membership, not appointed. The president can't simply choose to fire another member of the executive committee. The president's vote weighs the same as any other member of the executive committee. For this reason, I'm not sure an org chart with the president on top is appropriate.

Thank you!

For example, would it be improper or inadvisable for the secretary to move to approve the meeting minutes they wrote? What about the secretary nominating someone during an election? Are there certain motions a parliamentarian should avoid? What about the chair? From what I understand the chair has a duty to remain impartial, so they usually would try to avoid making motions if it would make them seem impartial, but it's not strictly against the rules for them to do so?

Thank you!

The chair attempted to pass a motion by unanimous consent. One member proposed that we have a vote on this item (this was the language they used; it wasn't any more formal than this). I assume this is considered objecting to unanimous consent. However, I also heard someone else consider this to be a "division". However, I'm not sure this exactly fits the definition of "division". Is it objecting to unanimous consent or division or is it both of those? Thanks

Very interesting. Thank you!

I heard someone say that the maker of the motion gets to speak 3 times in debate and the maker of the motion gets to speak first and last, however I can't find anything in RONR to back that up. I know the maker of the motion gets to speak in debate first. However, I feel that counts as one of their two allowed debate speeches. Also, does it say somewhere that the maker of the motion gets to speak in debate last? It's hard to prove a negative.

So let's say we have a small board and there was no motion to formally adopt the small board rules. What if someone is speaking in debate a 3rd time (this process is usually kind of informal in small board), and someone raises a point of order trying to block it? What is the appropriate ruling? Or what if this happens with one of the other special small board rules (e.g. a second to the motion is skipped and someone raises a point of order saying it must be seconded)?

What if there's a dispute as to whether we're following those rules or not? For example, what if a member tries to speak in debate more than twice, and one person argues it's ok since we're following the small board rules, and the another person argues we're not following those rules? There are many other possible examples also, such as whether the motion needs to be seconded or if informal discussion is permitted. This seems to be complicated even more by the fact that the language sets the cutoff as "about a dozen members present" instead of a hard exact numerical cutoff.

From your experience, is this very frequently done? Or in practice, does the new Executive Committee approve the minutes most of the time?

If an Executive Committee has the last meeting of their term, then new Executive Committee members are elected, is the standard process that the newly elected Executive Committee (at their first meeting) approves the minutes from the last meeting of the previous Executive Committee? It seems a bit odd to me since how can they offer corrections to a meeting they didn't attend. What do the official rules say about this? Thanks