rulesasker

Without authorization for electronic meetings on your bylaws, they are not allowed at all.

If it’s just a comment, it shouldn’t be in the minutes anyway. Has the assembly approved the minutes? If not, move to amend the minutes before they are approved. This would take a simple majority. But the secretary could also just correct the draft minutes before they are are approved.

Someone should have raised a point of order when the bylaw was violated. If the chair ignores that, they should have appealed to the assembly and could have overruled the chair by a majority vote.

RONR says that the chair appoints trustworthy people to serve as "tellers". If the chair thinks you and the other board member are trustworthy, maybe. But it might be difficult for the parliamentarian to adequately serve as a parliamentarian while counting votes. Unless your bylaws say otherwise, you don't even have to have the election if only one person is nominated. You can just say that the single nominee is elected "by acclamation" after giving people a chance to nominate someone else. Unless your bylaws say otherwise, you don't need to "post" anything. If your bylaws say that notice is required for the election, you just need to say that the meeting is for the purpose of the election, and the date and time the meeting starts. That's all RONR, if you're asking about best practices, I would think it is good to tell your society when the election is so that they feel like they have a voice.

None as far as RONR is concerned. Ex-officio just means that he is a member of the committee by virtue of some office.

They need to amend the bylaws using the procedure your bylaws give. So they need to adopt a motion to amend the bylaws to remove the rule against ice cream after dinner. Without doing that, a motion to eat ice cream after dinner is out of order because it conflicts with the bylaws, even if 2/3 want to eat ice cream after dinner. Normally, bylaws are written so that notice would be required before amending them. But your bylaws explicitly say that an amendment is allowed at any general membership meeting.

I wasn't able to follow everything you wrote, but no, they cannot ignore the bylaws. But they can change the bylaws by a 2/3 vote. Did they do that?

There's a lot going on here, but maybe we should start with the fact that the chair has the right to vote whether or not it's a ballot vote. Often the chair will only vote if it affects the result, but he always has the right.

Is the President supposed to relinquish the chair if he is nominated for president until the election is complete?

That will depend on the mistakes and what you want to accomplish.

What is he resigning from? Is he already an officer? What exactly do they say? Resigns twice from what?

Look at your bylaws for the process to remove the president. You can also vote to censure him. You'll want to look at the bylaws for a process to call a special meeting to do either of these.

Doesn’t 43:7 say that the chair can’t cut off debate by putting the question so quickly that members can’t get the floor, and the vote can be discarded even after the motion is adopted?

He opened the floor for debate, but he did not allow all to debate who wished. He should have asked if there was further debate after supervisor 1 spoke. Supervisor 3 (or someone else) should have raised a point of order that he was not allowed to debate. Maybe the chair thinks his “um” after stating the motion and second was enough of a pause for someone to speak up. But since there’s obviously doubt he should have asked the motion to be done again and explicitly asked if there was further debate before putting the vote.

Why isn’t this covered by the exception for violations of basic rights of members in 23:6(e)?

The chair is required to allow debate (this should have occurred after the second was made and before the vote rather than before the motion). The others are correct here that if the chair allowed for debate, then no rule was broken. But if he acted in such a way that someone who was seeking the floor before the vote was not able to speak, then he did violate 43:7.

Do the additional items actually change what was previously adopted, or are they merely additional actions? If the former, then the chairman of your committee should move to amend something previously adopted, and a 2/3s vote will be required. If the latter, then he could simply move to adopt them as a new motion, and only a majority is required (assuming something different is not required by something in your bylaws).

Was the agenda adopted by the convention? If so, then you could either amend the agenda or suspend the rules. Either way, it's a 2/3 vote. If the agenda was never adopted, then it is purely advisory.

Sorry, should have mentioned that the past practice included a printed name as well. I agree it is better to handle on the front end. Just trying to fully understand what is permissible and what is preferred. Everyone's responses have been very helpful.

They do need to at least say what is necessary to carry out what was done in executive session. I think that just means they need to say that the member was suspended. But they cannot discuss what else was done and said without voting in executive session to divulge it. Do the bylaws include some kind of appeal process for the board's suspension decisions? I believe if so, then that process would need to be followed even if it is true that the board did not follow the bylaws in making the decision. Did the meeting chair rule the motion out of order? You state that after the member made the motion, the board did something. But the chair is the next person to speak after a motion is made. If the chair ruled the motion out of order because the board has decided that the member is suspended, then the member can raise a point of order that he is not in fact suspended (because a procedure was not followed). If the chair then says that his point of order is not well taken, then the member can appeal to the rest of the meeting, and they will vote on whether to uphold the chair's decision. But wouldn't it be easier to just ask someone else to make the motion? You said it had a second, so that person can make the motion. If it comes down to a tie vote, I guess then you truly do need to worry about whether the member is suspended or not.

This seems best, though I couldn’t find anything in the book describing it. For this organization, a membership roll does not exist, but there are criteria for membership. We intend to ask everyone to confirm that they fit the criteria before handing them ballots, so the the honor system is still used, though there would be a larger barrier than passing them out. But returning to the original question, if people still want to use the signed ballots, is that not allowed since the bylaws say ballots, and 45:21 says ballots must be secret? I think the attractiveness of the signed ballots to some is that it’s simpler to hand out the ballots but we can still go back and resolve an allegation of impropriety after the fact.

This is a large organization and nonmembers are usually allowed to attend the meeting, so it is not easy. We have also discussed distributing ballots at the door after checking a roll.

Ok, my guess is that 45:21 is only when the vote has to be by ballot? So what if the bylaws say that the vote will be by ballot? Can we do it by signed ballot? The reason people want the ballots signed is to verify they are cast by members.

30:1 mentions motions to use a “signed ballot.” But 45:21 says that no action is in order that would force the disclosure of a member’s views. Is a motion for a signed ballot in order?

I’m sure this forum will be biased towards adopting RONR (3). Advantages would include that it is widely used. For the criticism that it is thick and complex, most people are able to use Robert’s Roles of Order in Brief as an easily digested guide to RONR, while adopting RONR as the actual parliamentary authority, which contains rules that may be useful in certain special cases that are likely not included in the simplified book you have adopted.