Alex Meed

Both chambers of the Texas Legislature, and other legislatures I've seen, have a little screen above the rostrum that shows the current parliamentary situation. Sometimes it gets complicated, like when a bill got a third-degree amendment (which is allowed in Texas if it's a substitute for the second-degree amendment) in 2017, as depicted in the attached photo (credit).

As far as I'm aware, that display is managed by custom software that is controlled by the clerks.

I participated in a small meeting (20–30 people) with Zoom, which worked decently well. One person is empowered as the host (probably the usual presiding officer), who can mute members to ensure that those who have the floor are speaking. At my meeting, the presiding officer asked members to place a single character in the chat window to seek the floor, though there is also a Raise Hand function that can be used for this purpose.

Your assembly would need to establish conventions for business that can interrupt a speaker; simply having a member say "Mr. Chairman" doesn't work as well because it is difficult to hear more than one speaker at a time. Voice votes don't work as well for the same reason, and in a large assembly rising votes will not work because the presiding officer cannot see all members at once.

Agreeing with Dr. Kapur: As well as your organization's bylaws (which it would be helpful to provide a relevant excerpt of if you can), your organization might also be subject to procedural rules under state/federal law. As mentioned above by Mr. Katz, though, we can't advise you on interpreting the law, only that if there's a difference between the law and RONR, the law takes precedence.

Our bylaws do not authorize electronic meetings and have a quorum of 5. In light of present difficulties with arranging physical meetings, we are considering an amendment to allow electronic meetings under certain circumstances. My plan as the president was to call a special meeting, give notice of the amendment in the call of that meeting, and get five people to hang out on a street corner for a minute or two to adopt the amendment.

However, because our university has moved classes online and closed its residence halls, many of our members have left town, and it seems impossible to make quorum. Therefore, I am considering deliberately holding an illegitimate meeting (either an inquorate meeting or an electronic meeting), adopting the amendment at that meeting, and then continuing to meet electronically until the circumstances allow an in-person meeting. At that in-person meeting, the actions taken to adopt the amendment, and at subsequent electronic meetings, would hopefully be ratified; the ratified actions would likely include the election of the officers who would be serving at the time of the ratification.

Is this procedure sound, apart from the obvious fact that the actions taken at future electronic meetings would technically be illegitimate unless they are ratified? Is there a simpler method of achieving this result? I should note our board is already authorized to meet electronically, but not to amend the bylaws.

I was waiting for when this forum would get its first coronavirus thread...

An organization has a regularly scheduled convention, and units that may adopt resolutions to be recommended to the parent organization. A person is a member of one of the units and not the parliamentarian, but is a member and the parliamentarian of the parent organization. Obviously, the person should not debate or vote on resolutions at the parent organization's convention when they serve as parliamentarian. But should that person also recuse themselves, within their unit, from discussions and votes on resolutions to be recommended to the convention?

11 hours ago, Daniel H. Honemann said:

When draft minutes are presented for approval, corrections to them may be proffered and agreed to. They may be amended only after they have already been approved.

But is my recollection correct that a motion to correct minutes is procedurally similar to a motion to amend a main motion? And if so, am I correct in then concluding that a motion to correct is debatable?

(I'm not sure I've ever managed to fit the word "correct" into a single paragraph that many times...)

5 hours ago, Rob Elsman said:

Making nominations in an election is a particular application of the rules for making suggestions to fill one or more blanks. As noted in RONR (11th ed.), p. 164, suggestions to fill one or more blanks in a debatable motion are debatable, each suggestion being treated as a separate, original proposal.

Thanks, I find this persuasive—but wouldn't the discussion take place after nominations have closed?

4 hours ago, Richard Brown said:

As Mr. Mervosh pointed out, RONR is not as clear as it could be regarding nominations being debatable and providing an opportunity for the members to discuss nominations and for nominees to speak to the assembly.  It is actually rather confusing.  However, it is perfectly permissible and quite commonfor organizations to provide for an opportunity for such discussion and/or speeches after nominations are closed and prior to voting.  This can be accomplished via a motion, a special rule of order, or, as I suspect is more common, simply by custom.  It has been my own experience that many organizations do provice for such a period of discussion and/or speeches after nominations are closed and prior to voting. Doing so is perfectly permissible when RONR is the parliamentary authority.

My organization essentially does it by custom.

Perhaps I've hijacked this thread a little too much...

11 hours ago, Rob Elsman said:

Nominations are debatable, so nominees who are members of the assembly can rise for the purpose of making speeches. Other members may also rise for the purpose of making speeches to endorse their favorite candidates.

Once nominations have closed, however, RONR (11th ed.) leaves the strong impression that members can rise for the purpose of making motions, but not for the purpose of making speeches.

11 hours ago, George Mervosh said:

I agree with Mr. Elsman.  Nominations are debatable but only when it's in order to make them, so don't close nominations until these speeches are concluded.

Messrs. Elsman and Mervosh, this seems logical and I don't doubt it, but I'm curious about where I could find this in the book.

My organization is to have an important meeting in the next few weeks, and some members desire to limit voting rights at that meeting to a particular class of established members. The bylaws have this to say about voting rights in general: "A member lacks the right to make motions and vote until noon the day after becoming a member, unless they were also a member in the immediately preceding semester." The bylaws are amendable by two-thirds vote with previous notice given at the preceding regular meeting; there is time to amend the bylaws before the aforementioned important meeting.

I know the motion to Suspend the Rules cannot negate a member's right to vote. Is there any way to shrink the class of eligible voters at a specific meeting, or on a particular question at that meeting, short of adding a temporary provision to the bylaws? For example, would a special rule of order be appropriate, or a main motion possibly adopted by a two-thirds vote or with previous notice?

Robert's Rules do not apply to business conducted in writing, and do not allow a group to officially take action unless it does so at a properly called meeting. The only way you can take action in writing is if your bylaws, or local/state/federal laws governing your organization, expressly allow it.

RONR says "sometimes a series of independent resolutions or main motions dealing with different subjects is offered in one motion. In such a case, one or more of the several resolutions must receive separate consideration and vote at the request of a single member...." RONR (11th ed.), p. 274, ll. 32–36. "Similarly, a series of amendments to a main motion (or conceivably to a primary amendment such as a substitute) may be offered in one motion. Unless these amendments meet the standard for conforming amendments given on pages 273–74, any member may demand a separate vote on one or more of them." p. 275, ll. 7–12.

However, "a motion cannot be divided unless each part presents a proper question for the assembly to act upon if none of the other parts is adopted, and unless the effect of adopting all of the parts will be exactly the same—no more, no less—as adoption of the compound mean question." p. 272, ll. 19–24.

Suppose a member wishes to eliminate the office of Financial Secretary from the bylaws, transferring some duties to the existing office of Recording Secretary and some to the existing office of Treasurer. The member offers a series of bylaws amendments, one to strike "Financial Secretary" from the list of officers, and the others to strike "Financial Secretary" from each place it appears and insert "Recording Secretary" or "Treasurer" as appropriate.

Clearly each of these are separate amendments in the parliamentary sense, but they depend on one another such that the whole is not the sum of its parts (e.g., adopting only the first amendment but not the others would leave a reference to a nonexistent office in the bylaws). However, the standard for conforming amendments appears narrow enough that these amendments would not meet it. It is also conceivable that a member would want to move some of the reassigned duties between the Recording Secretary and the Treasurer, which I presume would be easier if one of the latter amendments gets a separate vote.

In light of this, is it in order to offer the series of amendments given above with a single enacting motion? If so, is that motion divisible on demand, divisible by majority vote, indivisible, or a combination?

6 hours ago, Josh Martin said:

I think all of the specific examples of duties provided here could be delegated to other persons by the board, and that other duties of a similar nature could also be delegated.

Thanks. Can you think of any examples of duties that wouldn't be able to be delegated? And is there somewhere even vaguely relevant that I could look in RONR?

3 hours ago, Josh Martin said:

I do not think this question can be answered with certainty without knowing precisely what (if anything) the organization’s rules say on this matter, what exactly the powers and duties in question are, and whether the duties in question are specified in the bylaws, in some lower-level rule, or are simply a custom.

Generally, I am doubtful that the officer himself could delegate his duties and powers to another person. A board (especially one with full power and authority) might be able to do so, but again, it depends on the details.

The bylaws are silent, and the society has no other standing rules. As for the nature of the duties, let's take two cases:

1. the duties are administrative and are explicitly set forth in the bylaws—such as securing accommodations for meetings, preserving the society's charter with parent organizations, collecting dues, and responding to members' requests for specific types of information; and
2. the duties generally pertain to outreach and advocacy and are set forth in general terms in the bylaws—such as to liaise with a broad class of other organizations or operate the society's social media—with implementation details governed by custom as well as the officer's own judgment.

3 hours ago, Josh Martin said:

That is up to the society. If the society adopts such a rule, it should also define what exactly it means for an officer to take a “leave of absence,” as RONR does not define this term.

What I had in mind was something allowing officers to temporarily give their powers and duties to another member, subject to board approval. I probably should have expected y'all to leave it up to the society, but it's good to know it doesn't strike you as an abjectly bad idea.

The bylaws give an officer certain powers and duties that are not connected with running meetings.

May the officer delegate those powers and duties to another person (for instance, if the officer wishes to take a brief leave of absence)? Must the delegation be approved by our board? Our bylaws are silent. Our board has full power and authority.

Also, is it advisable to add a bylaws provision allowing officers to take leaves of absence?

The point of including Whereas clauses is for your resolution to have two parts: what you are doing and why you are doing it. The Whereas clauses (the preamble) provide reasons for the action you're taking, and the Resolved clauses are the actual action.

If you don't want to include reasons, you don't need Whereas clauses; you can just include the Resolved clauses. Or you can just make it a motion, not a resolution, which doesn't need Resolved clauses at all. If you want to include reasons, but don't like the look of the word Whereas, the suggestions above (like Since or Because) might be appropriate.

If only my skill in all aspects of my life were commensurate with my ability to generate conflict on a parliamentarians' forum.... I'll respond to a few comments first and then briefly summarize my impression. The TL;DR, as some put it, is at the bottom.

On 1/25/2020 at 12:04 PM, Richard Brown said:

Now, the method of arriving at a dual endorsement is an entirely different matter. There are a myriad of ways in which the organization can do that. The first two that come to mind are a motion “that the XYZ endorsement club endorse Jane Smith and Jack Jones as mayor” or that they endorse the two candidates receiving the largest number of votes provided that each of the top two candidates receive a certain percentage of the vote.

I think all the clubs in our area that allow dual endorsements use one of those two models, combined with the aforementioned two-round voting system. They're difficult to adapt to preferential balloting, though.

Quote

There are countless other methods that could be used for deciding, first, whether to endorse two candidates and second, to be used in deciding which two candidates to endorse. I’m not ready to speculate on what I think the best method of accomplishing that would be.  Perhaps that’s what Alex M is asking us to do. I’m really not sure.  RONR certainly does provide some alternatives for doing so. Not all of those alternatives are in the chapter on nominations and elections.

That is exactly what I'm asking you to do—though judging from this forum's general (and understandable) inhospitability to being asked to speculate, I perhaps should have known better than to ask.

On 1/25/2020 at 6:58 PM, Atul Kapur said:

Weldon, that's not the problem I see. In the OP's situation, they are not yet decided on how many candidates to endorse. If they decide on the number ahead of time, then it is a simple matter of following the nomination/election procedure. But, as I read it, they want to hold off on making that decision until after at least one round of voting.

A few semesters ago, we switched to preferential ballot specifically to avoid having multiple rounds of voting. It also took multiple hours to count ballots at our last endorsement forum, long after many participants had departed. So ideally we would be able to use only one round of voting to decide whether to endorse one candidate (or none) or multiple.

On the other hand, I'm wary of selecting the number of candidates to endorse ahead of time, since voting results can often be hard to predict in our endorsement elections. I could foresee a situation happening where a few members, desiring to endorse candidates A and B, persuade a majority to add another blank to the endorsement motion—perhaps even with that stated purpose—only to find that the results favor A and C instead. But perhaps that can be justified as all part of the strategy.

In any event, it increasingly seems that my wishes in the preceding two paragraphs are mutually exclusive, at least if we want a fair and comprehensible voting system.

22 hours ago, J. J. said:

I will, however, note the nature of an endorsement, in the general case.  It is a formal recommendation to vote for someone for an office.  When there is only one office to be filled, the voter is being asked to to effectively cast an illegal vote of more candidates than there are offices.  The group endorsing may not wish to do that.

If there was a desire to state that this group would find some candidates acceptable for a certain office and other candidates not acceptable, that would be a solution,  Some groups in my state say "qualified" and "not qualified."  There may be many candidates for an office that could be found to be "qualified."

To me, endorsing one candidate is akin to saying "we believe this candidate is most qualified for the position". Endorsing two means "we believe each of these candidates is equally qualified (or almost equally qualified), and a voter should select one of the two to vote for". In theory, we might find ourselves believing the same about three or more candidates. But I believe the organization also has an interest in avoiding overly broad endorsements; an endorsement loses its potency when it's combined with endorsements of half the candidates in the race.

To summarize, this discussion has helped me crystallize my hopes for a new system—allowing my organization to endorse a variable number of candidates, not decided in advance, with only one round of voting. It has also helped convince me that this is a fool's errand. I believe having a single round of voting is more important to my membership than being able to endorse multiple candidates, so unless I have a flash of creativity I'll likely not argue for any changes of the latter sort.

Thanks for your assistance, and for adding to the reading load that graduate school has imposed on me!

10 hours ago, George Mervosh said:

Mr. Honemann addressed this in this thread https://robertsrules.forumflash.com/topic/30575-motion-arising-from-officers-report/?tab=comments#comment-177242

Interesting. I wonder what General Robert's reasoning was when he wrote that into the first draft. It strikes me as decidedly odd.

I am the president of a political organization that endorses candidates in primary elections—one candidate per race (with the option to make "No Endorsement"), by preferential ballot, per our bylaws.

We are one of about two dozen organizations in our city affiliated with our political party who also make endorsements under their own rules. Most of these clubs endorse one candidate per race in two-round elections, where the top two candidates from the first round enter a runoff if neither gains a majority in the first round.

We recently rewrote our bylaws and made endorsements in the 2020 primary election under the new bylaws. I'm now on the lookout for possible process improvements. One idea I have is based on other clubs in our city that allow dual endorsements. For instance, in one club, if nobody gets the required fraction of votes in the first round, a member can move to issue a dual endorsement instead of holding a runoff. If the motion is passed, the club endorses both candidates at once. (I'm not sure of the vote margin required for the motion.)

My questions, which might be out of scope here but I'll ask anyway:

• Does this appear to be a sound procedure? What should the vote margin be?
• Are there any alternative ways that you've encountered of allowing the body to elect either one or two candidates?
• How could this be fit into a preferential-ballot system, as my organization uses? (Especially since usually many members have gone home by the time the tellers report; that's part of why we switched from two rounds to preferential balloting in the first place.)
• Is the whole idea dumb to begin with? Am I missing any pitfalls?

5 minutes ago, Guest Emily said:

If a member is unsatisfied with an agenda item, it is correct to say that he can make a Motion to Amend that item and debate about it? I know that motions to amend are only debatable when applied to a motion that is itself debatable, but I don't know how to tell if the agenda items are debatable or not. Can I assume that all items on an agenda are main motions because they bring business before the assembly and require a vote? For example, what if one of the items on the agenda is a proposed rule. Is a proposed rule a main motion if the assembly is going to vote to adopt/not adopt the proposed rule? So the member could make a Motion to Amend the proposed rule and would have to be given the opportunity to speak in debate about his suggested amendments? Are there any ways that a different member, who wants to prevent the motion maker from debating, could do so, like through a Motion to Suspend the Rules to vote without debate?

Any new item of business brought before the assembly is a main motion. It seems you use "agenda item" to refer to a new item of business that your assembly is considering; each of those would thus be a main motion, and all main motions are inherently debatable. An amendment to a debatable motion is also debatable.

A member who wishes to cut off debate may move the Previous Question. That motion, to be adopted, requires a two-thirds vote and is not debatable; if it is adopted, it immediately ends debate on whatever motion(s) it was applied to.

RONR states, in connection with Reports of Officers, Boards, and Standing Committees: "If an officer, in reporting, makes a recommendation, he should not himself move its implementation.... In the case of a committee report, on the other hand, the chairman or other reporting member should make any motion(s) necessary to bring the committee's recommendations before the assembly for consideration." RONR (11th ed.), p. 356, ll. 5–11.

This gives rise to two questions:

• Should the chairman of a board make any motions arising from the board's report (as for committees) or allow other members to make the motion (as for officers of the society)?
• From a normative perspective, why are officers (apart from the president) encouraged not to move adoption of their recommendations?

4 hours ago, anon said:

I'm confused. The member has indicated it will be an embarrassment to rescind the motion, yet you say the member is debating in support of the rescission. Which is it?

3 hours ago, Richard Brown said:

I think the point the member is trying to make is that the organization perhaps tends to endorse foods prematurely or unwisely and then has to rescind the endorsement.  He apparently finds this embarrassing and wants the society to stop endorsing foods altogether. My guess is that he thinks it will be even more embarrassing to not rescind the banana endorsement so he favors the rescission.

Mr. Brown is correct as to what my intent was; the member feels that rescission is embarrassing as a general rule but necessary in this instance, but wants the society to be less eager to designate official food items so that it doesn't make choices that it later feels obligated to rescind.

I understand that if there are no nominees for a position, there is still a ballot in which members may vote for anyone they wish, and the person who is elected is given the option to accept or decline (immediately if present; when notified if absent).

What if this happens repeatedly—i.e., nobody wants to fill the role? Can the assembly:

• postpone completing the election?
• postpone it to a time after the officers-elect are due to take office (if a time is provided in the bylaws)?
• postpone it indefinitely?
• amend the bylaws to remove the office and assign its powers and duties to other offices? (I presume the answer is yes)
• adopt some sort of motion (other than a bylaws amendment) that particular other officers shall fulfill the duties of the vacant office? (What vote would be required?)
• take some other action to avoid having to complete the election?

And while the office remains vacant, who exercises its powers and duties? (Perhaps this has been asked elsewhere.)

At a meeting, a society adopts a motion "to designate bananas as the official fruit of the Society", in addition to multiple other motions designating various other food items, such as official cereal and official pancake mixes.

Later, the members learn unsavory information about bananas, to the extent that a member moves to rescind their designation as the official fruit. In debate, another member speaks in support of the rescission. The member's remarks include the following: "This is why we should be wary of designating official food items in the future—we always run the risk of not having enough information, and then we have to publicly embarrass ourselves by rescinding the designation."

Because the member's comments do not relate directly to the pending question, which is about bananas, are the member's comments in order?

3 hours ago, Weldon Merritt said:

It seems to me that Dr. Stackpole's list makes a pretty persuasive argument. If that isn't persuasive enough, I don't know what would be.

Fair enough. I'm still not convinced I can get over the tellers' instinct to not announce in lopsided races with multiple worthwhile candidates, as I discussed above.

Hopefully people see the value in the other transparency-related aspects, though. But I brought up similar points in bylaws committee and in floor consideration of our bylaws revision—and everyone seemed to agree with them, until the tellers had a lopsided report in their hands and refused to fulfill their duty to read it aloud to the assembly.