jggorman

Thank you for your help. We settle on suggesting the use of alternates for a year is the best option because it increase the limited representation that was cause by merging departments. Dare I tell you we are bound by law to not be able to amend our own bylaws without external authority approving the changes as a result of binding arbitration. Thanks for all your help once again.

We have a number of departments that are split so that they elect senators and alternates in even-numbered years and half elect them in odd-numbered years according to our bylaw. Some of these department are merging into departments that vote in the opposite years. This will cause terms that two-years as indicated in our bylaws to expire on the wrong odd/even year in some cases.

How is staggering accomplished if term length is indicated in bylaws? Our bylaws indicate this below, but this may be ambiguous because these are terms expiring in a the wrong year.

Thank you all. I think I understand.

I think I understand if you are saying no individual officer has any powers, only the Executive Committee if they meet and vote and then only because our bylaws expressly granted that to the EC and not individual officers. If you are saying something like the EC cannot decide anything unless in a regular meeting of the full Senate, than I do not understand, because our bylaws give that power to the EC when our Senate cannot meet.

To clarify, the Executive Committee is defined in our bylaws as the Officers. Thank you all for responding.

Thank you, that is all very helpful. I hope everyone realizes the good work everyone is doing here. It changes lives.

The appeals are for courses to be added to list of approved courses list. This is some that usually is detailed in procedures. In all procedures documented, the question of adding a course to a list was allowed to proceed to the full members even if various signatories disapproved. However, two years ago the assembly agreed to procedures allowing an external committee to our assembly to approve courses as part of a few approval steps. Then that committee started denying the courses and they were not allowed to proceed to be voted on by our assembly (something that never happened before). The original motion adopted did not say it was a new procedure, nor did was there mention of what would happen if this external committee did not approve of a course being added to the list. In fact, it was conveyed that our existing procedures would be update yet they never were. Now years later, it is being claimed that the procedure is new and not in our procedures manual and no one challenged the veto power of the original ad-hoc committee. Members complained about a lack of appeals process and a number of members responded with this new procedure and new committee. This new appeals process would be a different external committee and codifies the power of veto as being in our officers hands.

I'd like to object to the question of considering the question (the procedure on appeals) on the grounds that it contains description of a committee that does not exist and if this process existed without a vote to adopt, it would violate our bylaws. Or perhaps on the grounds that the chairperson lacks the authority to create a committee that is not defined in our bylaws and is partially consisting of members who are not on our committee whose membership is defined in the parent organization's bylaws (this is where our bylaws reside, we only have our procedures).

I don't know if RONR has a rule about creating an ad-hoc committee that is not a subcommittee of a committee, that is external, and has members outside of the committee if that power is not already indicated in bylaws.

The strange part is also, it is not technically a violation if the body adopts it first. In other words, the assembly is free to adopt rules that contradict RONR even if they have a parliamentary authority statement in their bylaws, if they choose to do so.

Our chairperson is asking us to consider an appeals process that involves what will be a newly created appeals committee that will vote on matters. This new appeals committee is not a sub committee of our assembly and consists of some people that are either not members of our committee or non-voting members. The new appeals process additionally grants the officers the power of veto, that is to deny the appeal and prevent the full members from voting on it. Our bylaws give the officers the power to create ad-hoc committees (though states nothing about a committee or procedures external to our own). In our bylaws and procedures documents clearly state that all matters presented to ad-hoc committees must be presented to the assembly for a vote, the chairman is claiming that this new committee will not be under our assembly, but rather a combination of our committee and an external committee, so therefore does not need to follow our rules or that our rules can be changed by voting on the document. Also the claim is that it is not a violation of any rules, I assume because it is not in affect until we vote on it, at which point it will supersede Robert's Rules (to which we our bound in our bylaws).

Also note, we have a subcommittee, that deals with these matters, but the chairperson is asserting that the matters are different. The subcommittee, nor all our subcommittee, do not have appeals process because our procedures for each sub committee indicate that all matters may be voted on by the full members.

What can be done?

Thank you!

When there are no physical meetings and elections happen via email and online voting, does RONR 46:6 still apply? Our organization created a special rule to allow electronic voting. However, we have nothing in our bylaws or constitution about this or authorizing electronic meetings. We have a customary rule that there is a deadline for nominations which are by petition that just appears in the election notification. The petition requirement, but no deadline, is indicated in our bylaws and it is the members who sign the petitions with a number of members required. I think RONR 46:6 indicates that nominations from the floor are required, but in this case is the nominations from the floor requirement satisfied because the petitions are signed by the members and not a committee? Would this rule apply if there is no physical meeting? I assume if it does, since the deadline rule was customary and not voted on, that the deadline should not prevent someone from being nominated by petition.

I ask because there was at least one candidate for an officer position that handed in their petition just a little late and the customary rule is being cited to not allow their name to appear on the ballot and could also be used to deny posting their statements on our website for members to review and further disallow them from participating in a public questions and answers forum for the candidates.

I also would like to ask if there is any RONR that indicates that RONR still applies even if business is conducted without meetings (such as via email)?

Thanks to all!

Teller's would be violating 46:31 Ballot Election if they made ballot counting a private meeting and did not allow observers, as previously mentioned the counting can be done in front of the assembly and there is this:

"When these reports are completed for all offices, the chairman of tellers, after reading them to the assembly, submits them to the chair, who, as he reads each one of them again, declares the result for that office."

GM: No, I don't think it is appropriate for Tellers to create arbitrary rules. I don't think they have the authority for that.

Can a candidate serve as their own observer for an election tally? We have authorized electronic voting and the tally/election report is opened by the Tellers, but not at a regular meeting of the full membership. Can a candidate his/herself attend this Teller meeting to observe the procedure of opening the electronic voting (website) and see the tally? The only possible relevant item in our bylaws is this: "The ballots shall be tabulated by the [omission of proper name] Tellers Committee and the results shall be forwarded to the Executive Committee who shall inform the membership."

Thank you.

Thanks Mr. Martin and I think that wraps it up for my question. Everyone here is so generous with their time and it is very appreciated.

Hi Joshua Katz. The problem is that you can stop someone from write-ins with electronic ballots. For example, with Election Buddy you have to actually allow write-ins to be able to type in a name. If you do not enable that option, there is no place to submit a write-in. That is what is being suggested at our organization, that the feature for write-ins, not be enabled.

A potential difficulty with RONR indicating in RONR 12th, 45:18 (below) that eligible persons are able to be written-in is that faulty logic can lead you to think that ineligible person cannot be written-in. Yet as Atul Kapur pointed out, an ineligible person can be written-in but the vote would be counted as an illegal vote. I think it can be explained with predicate logic. "If A then B" does not mean "if Not A then Not B." The implication order would need be inverted and not simply negated. "If Not B then Not A" is the contrapositive of "If A then B" and based on logic. However, "If A then B" therefore "if Not A then Not B" is a fallacy.

Someone is trying to propose that if you do not have any eligible candidates that can be written-in such as is the case if your bylaws say that only nominated candidates whose names appear on the ballot can be elected, then RONR 12th, 45:18 means that you cannot have write-ins. That is to say that write-ins are not allowed even as illegal votes. This is not much of an issue with paper ballots, but with electronic ballots there is an option to not have write-ins available at all and this is what is being proposed (though in our case it appears there is nothing in the documents pertaining to nominations for this election).

RONR 12th, 45:18:
"On a ballot vote in an election or other vote involving multiple possible choices, members are able to write in or fill in a vote for any eligible person or choice and are not confined to voting for or against candidates that appear on the ballot."

Thank you. Unfortunately I've made a mess of my question and therefore your answer Atul Kapur. I meant to say "illeligible" instead of "eligible" and corrected it above. I'm not sure of the best course of action to correct that section of these posts.

I agree. I do not think that RONR passage addressed the question and it can only be addressed by if there is something in the bylaws about being elected only if nominated by petition. However, part of what I am asking, is a silly one, "are you allowed to write-in illegal candidates." In other words, if the bylaws were to state that a candidate can only be elected if they are nominated by petition, must write-ins be removed from an electronic ballot, or must they be included and all write-ins counted as illegal votes.

Update 2nd edit, unfortunately I had to rewrite my question after it was answered immediately below, underlined is where changes are. Specifically, it is being proposed that passage infers that illegible write-ins are not allowed under RONR. Further it is proposed that if only petition nominated candidates where to be allowed than logic follows that write-ins are not allowed.

Does the passage below indicate write-ins are not allowed if there were something in an organization's documents that indicated only members nominated by petition are eligible to be elected? I am referring to that it does not specifically say members are able to write-in an illegible candidate.

RONR 12th, 45:18:
"On a ballot vote in an election or other vote involving multiple possible choices, members are able to write in or fill in a vote for any eligible person or choice and are not confined to voting for or against candidates that appear on the ballot."

Thank you everyone. I really appreciate your swift replies!

Thanks again. it seems it only applies to nominations and does not prohibit write-ins, nor having them being elections. My understanding is that according to RONR, one does not need to be nominated to be elected, write-ins must be allowed and counted as a legal vote cast unless it for is an illegible candidate. If the write-in is cast for illegible candidate then it is counted as an illegal vote cast, but still counted for the majority. 

Thanks for your reply! I appreciate it.