John Cummings

11 hours ago, Atul Kapur said:

If your intent was just to get to electronic voting, I'm not sure why the motion you proposed was to allow mail-in voting.  These are two different things. Your motion may have been defeated because it was an overreach and if you had just proposed that those who are participating electronically can vote electronically, you may have prevailed.

Thanks, I agree, in hindsight I should have prepared the article better and done exactly as you recommended.  The article was done last minute and I didn't have much time to research electronic voting.  My flawed reasoning for my approach is that there are many in this summer association that are elderly and not computer literate. I didn't want to scare them off and figured they would be comfortable with mail.   Also as I mentioned in another thread this year was an exception due to Covid-19.  For this year only we conducted a mail-in vote as allowed by NH Condo Act and every owner was able to participate in the vote.  Typically only 150 out of 459 owners attend the annual meeting and vote, this year everyone had the option to vote by mail and 375 owners participated.

My overall goal is to improve our voting process to allow more participation and have a hybrid of voting options, in-person and electronic and perhaps this happened by accident with the "Electronic Meeting Vote".  Our current process outside of the COvid-19 year is to allow only in-person voting for those that are lucky enough to be able to attend the meeting.  THis is a summer Condo association and most close up and return home prior to the annual meeting, so they don't.  I understand the proxy option, but we don't have tight controls over that process.

Thanks again

Thanks Josh,

  Here is the reason for the question.   We had 2 ballot questions on our agenda yesterday that I believe affected voting, both required 2/3 vote to pass.  One to allow mail-in voting narrowly failed by just a few votes. I was the sponsor of this article and my long term goal was to get to electronic voting, but thought I would go slowly .   The second article to allow meetings electronically passed easily by > 2/3 vote.

So, after analyzing the article I reasoned that we had in fact just approved electronic voting which was my end goal anyway. 
 

Wondering if we just voted to allow electronic voting without realizing it. 

Our annual meeting was yesterday and the owners approved a new by-law to allow "electronic meetings" shown below.  Our existing "voting" by-law also shown below states that owners are entitled to cast a vote for each unit own at a meeting.  

My questions.

• What is the definition of "in person" ?  Is an owner attending a meeting electronically considered "in person" ?  I think so.
• Does our voting by-law paired with the new electronic meeting by-law now allow electronic voting? 
  • Seems to me that if we are allowed to vote at a meeting and meetings are now allowed to be conducted electronically then the logical conclusion is that we can vote electronically.

New By-Law to allow electronic meetings

Meetings by Telephonic, Video, or Other Conferencing Process. – This new bylaw provides, the Association, Committees thereof, and the Board of Directors the ability to meet by telephonic, video, other conferencing process or electronic meeting tools.

Existing Voting bylaw
Voting. At any meeting of the Association, the owners shall be entitled to cast one vote for each Condominium Unit owned. Any owner may attend and vote at such meeting in person or by proxy

Thanks

John

Thanks for the response,

Mail-in voting is allowed by the NH Condo Act, but our standard is to have an in-person annual meeting in which our voting takes place.   This years mail-in vote was a Covid-19 exception and next year assuming we are back to normal times we will go back to the in-person meeting.  The voting article was to make mail-in voting the new standard in our by-laws replacing the by-law on the in-person meeting.  After reviewing my math it would need a full 14 votes to shift and that won't happen - oh well.

The issue with the in-person meeting is that the association is a summer camp/residency and the meeting is held at the very end of the season when most of the owners have already returned to their homes.   The owners are dispersed up and down the east coast and can't attend the meeting to vote.  So, we have an annual meeting where only 150 out of the 456 owners attend, many of these 150 are holding multiple votes via proxy and we do not have a good way to manage the proxy's.

I guess the obvious question to me is, why not change the meeting date so that more can attend.  Well, that takes a 2/3 vote at the association meeting and the 150 that attend that meeting would never vote for that as they would lose their voting advantage.  This years mail-in vote was probably the only chance we will have to make a change in our voting system as each owner had one and only one vote. 

Thanks again

John

7 minutes ago, Atul Kapur said:

 

This, of course, assumes that the mail-in vote and "vote counting meeting" were both authorized by your rules.

The mail-in vote and voting meeting are another subject all together.  The NH Condo act allows mail-in voting as long as long our by-laws don't prevent mail-in voting and they don't.  Our association attorney agreed. But there has been a lot of lively debate on that. I guess for the purpose of my question out association attorney is correct.  Ironically the vote in question is to allow mail-in voting for the association.

So, sounds like a recount can be called, but it has to be done at a meeting of the association and that meeting has to occur within a quarter time interval from the voting meeting. Also a majority vote at the next meeting is required to approve the recount.  We do have a meeting next month, so I guess that would be the next opportunity to request a recount.

How likely is it that we had 7 tabulation errors?  We had 14 voting articles and 400 ballots, so we had 5600 tabulations.  Doesn't seem too far fetched to have 7 errors, does it? 

Thanks for the response!

John

 

Sorry in advance for a question that has had similar questions asked before. I've read through the threads and am still unclear.

This year due to covid-19 we conducted a mail in vote, tallied the votes and announced the results and adjourned the vote counting meeting.  There was an article that was announced as "failed" to get the required 2/3 vote and after closer inspection it was discovered to have lost by 14 votes or really 7 votes that could have been counted incorrectly. 

Is it too late to call for a recount after the vote counting session has adjourned or do we still have until the next association meeting as I am seeing in some of the threads. 

I guess the second part of the question is that how likely out of 400 votes cast would it be to have 7 errors?  My thoughts are is that is could be possible by maybe unlikely.

Thanks

John Cummings

3 hours ago, Atul Kapur said:

Actually > or = 2/3. A vote of 10:5 adopts a motion requiring 2/3.

RONR is written for use by honourable people.

As for the Point of Order officiousness, I agree with Mr. Martin on how the chair should handle it.

Thanks,

Just wondering if an honorable person waits until the meeting is nearly over and many have left to make the motion to reconsider. It was clearing a smart move by someone that understood RONR, but honorable?  Not so sure.

Thanks Josh.

8 hours ago, Guest Zev said:

One final curiosity question.

When you said

Did the assembly vote only one single time on the motion to Reconsider and then imagined that nothing else needed to be done and the motion was now adopted by the same vote to Reconsider? I ask this question because standard procedure requires a majority vote for the motion to Reconsider and a second vote to either adopt or reject the reconsidered motion along with its original requirements to adopt it, which in this case was a two-thirds vote. Was this second vote actually taken? Not that it makes any difference at this late junction because these are procedural errors that must the appealed at the time they are made; now its too late.

There were two votes.  The vote to reconsider which required >50% followed by the original item which required  > 2/3.

I'm not a lawyer, but what I find odd about this learning experience for me is that in most cases Robert's Rules  are very rigid and must be precise or you aren't even recognized, but in other cases, such as the burden of proof for reconsideration as to how one voted word of mouth is all the proof you need.  Those 2 things just to make sense to me, guess that is why I'm not a lawyer.

If I want to raise a point of order without saying point of order, then I'm denied, but all I need to do is say I voted one way and it is taken as gospel.  Many of you folks are lawyers, how many criminals said they didn't do it?  Is that proof?  

Thanks for all the responses
 

6 hours ago, Joshua Katz said:

Don't protest until you're blue in the face, just move to appeal the ruling of the chair. It's much less damaging to your health.

Thanks,

The real issue is that only about 5 people in attendance really know Roberts Rules well and I was one of those that didn't know them well.  Won't make that mistake again, too important.

Thanks Josh,  I agree, stay till the end.

39 minutes ago, reelsman said:

Mr. Kapur makes me doubt the accuracy of my previous response. All of a sudden, I get the feeling I don't understand the original post.

Thanks,
Here is the definition of prevailing side from roberts rules glossary. In ordinary english, seems clear, but I am not a lawyer.

PREVAILING SIDE. The winning side which may be either the affirmative or the negative.

11 minutes ago, Daniel H. Honemann said:

We are told that:

"On the reconsideration vote, the motion passed by "1" vote, the "yes" vote prevailed.   The motion to reconsider was 2 hours after the initial vote and some folks had left the meeting, so the vote total was about 30 less."

It isn't at all clear whether this relates to the vote on the motion to reconsider or to the vote on the main motion after the motion to reconsider was adopted.

 

 

The motion to reconsider was made approximately 2 hours after the initial vote.  The motion to reconsider was challenged as invalid as it came from the losing side, but that challenge was shot down by the lawyer/moderator. The moderator said, the losing side, was the prevailing side.  The vote on the reconsideration motion passed easily as it only required >50%.

The 2nd vote on the article after the reconsideration vote passed, was very close.  The 2nd vote passed by 1 single vote and required 2/3 majority to pass,

Sorry for the confusion. Hopefully, I didn't make it worse.

Thanks again for all the replies.  These replies show how important it is to have someone very well versed in Roberts Rules moderate the meeting.  We could have protested the motion to reconsider until we were blue in the face, but since the lawyer was also the moderator his definition of "prevail"  decided the issue.

24 minutes ago, Guest Zev said:

I am now worried that the nature of this motion may severely affect any answer. Can you wax a little bit about what kind of motion this was and the reason why it required a two-thirds vote?

Trying not to state any specific details, but this was a vote on a multi-million dollar contract.  It is my understanding that financial issues of this nature require 2/3 vote, at least in our HOA.
Thanks

Sure, no worries. Just came here to understand what I witnessed .

Thanks, great info here.

1 minute ago, Joshua Katz said:

But again, so what? The lawyer's definition only matters if the chair buys it, and if the chair is then sustained on appeal.

The lawyer was the meeting chair. I'm new to all this, but the president announced this to start the meeting.

Thanks

55 minutes ago, Atul Kapur said:

Apparently he was using a legal definition of "prevail" (with apologies to all the lawyers on this forum who do understand parliamentary law and plain English, as this exact situation is explained on p. 315, line 34 - p. 316, line 1).

It's not clear what happened so it's not clear if that's necessary. Did the motion to Reconsider get called up?
If so, was it adopted?
If so, what happened to the original motion: was it defeated again or did it obtain the 2/3 vote required this time?

 The original vote, the motion failed, the "no" votes prevailed.
Someone on the losing side was erroneously allowed to make a motion to reconsider.  Many objected, but the lawyer stood by his definition of prevali.

On the reconsideration vote, the motion passed by "1" vote, the "yes" vote prevailed.   The motion to reconsider was 2 hours after the initial vote and some folks had left the meeting, so the vote total was about 30 less.

Thanks

19 minutes ago, Guest Zev said:

To my recollection this is the first time I have ever seen the suggestion that a losing faction in a vote actually prevailed.

It is causing lots of controversy. Apparently the HOA lawyer doesn't know roberts rules.

His interpretation was that the side that didn't prevail was actually the winning side when applying the reconsideration rule since they received > 50%+1.   It was a 2/3 vote requirement.

Several folks actually had roberts rules with them and challenged the lawyer, but the lawyer got it wrong.

3 minutes ago, George Mervosh said:

Well it's too late to appeal too!

Thanks, glad to hear someone that is impartial to our situation.

4 minutes ago, George Mervosh said:

 

It's too late now to raise a point of order over a procedural error, Mr. Kelley.

It was raised at the meeting but denied due to the lawyers error.  We are part of the same hoa.  All on tape.  

Thanks again.

9 minutes ago, George Mervosh said:

"A member who voted by ballot may make the motion if he is willing to waive the secrecy of his ballot."  RONR (11th ed.), p. 316

Yep, you just take his word for it.  Same with a voice vote.  The chair asks how the member voted and if he states he voted on the prevailing side you take his word for it.

Thanks George.  Wow, that caught me off guard.  Why even have that provision in the reconsideration rule, if there is no proof.  Oh well.

Have an add on to Jeff's question.  The motion to raise something for reconsideration needs to come from the prevailing side.   We have absolutely no proof how the person that made the motion to reconsider voted.  The ballot is private.  We don;t know how the person voted, if the voted at all or if they filled out their ballot incorrectely.

Seems to me, if the motion to reconsider is dependent on how someone voted and we don't know how they voted, then this option should be off the table.  Is word of mouth proof as to how they voted?  Not to me.