Lanie

I am admittedly out of my depth here. But the Secretary has always been responsible for producing the minutes. The bylaws don't specifically mention the minutes, but nobody has ever argued that he is not responsible for producing them.

Would it make a difference to know that no point of order was raised at the time, and the original motion was amended on the floor from 1 day (which his usual turn-around time) to the 3 day time frame that the secretary agreed to?

Michigan Libertarians again. We had a convention on Mar 09. The chair of the party did not chair the convention, preferring to make and argue motions from the floor. One of the motions was to challenge an entire affiliate's delegation, and the other was to keep 4 members from being seated as delegates after their suspensions were rescinded. Both the motion and the challenge failed, and in that process the body voted to interpret a bylaw in a manner that he strongly disagrees with. After the 4 members were seated as delegates, the credentials report was updated to reflect their status as delegates. The delegation then broke off into local affiliate caucuses and elected their Executive Committee representatives. No objections or points of order were raised at that time. 2 of the members elected to the EC seats were subjects of the failed attempts to prevent them from being seated. Our bylaws and RONR indicate that they became board members at the close of the convention. At the next board meeting, 03/10, the "chair" announced he was going to file an appeal with the Judicial Committee and overturn the decision of the delegates at convention and in the meantime, he was not going to seat those representatives. As they were already seated, he clearly has no such authority to do any such thing, but he refused to allow them to participate in the meeting. Last night, at the 04/14 board meeting, he again refused to allow those delegates to speak or vote, again saying that he intended to file an appeal with the Judicial Committee. The voting is especially important, because their votes would have changed several outcomes. At least 2 board members tried to explain the bylaws arguments, but he refused to entertain it. He did allow the board to vote to uphold his decision, which amounts to just another violation of the bylaws. This isn't an argument about the limits of the judicial committee power. My questions are: 1. Is there anything a minority can actually do to restrain a majority who refuses to adhere to their own rules? 2. As the votes of those members would have changed the outcome on some significant actions, what happens to those actions?

The motion failed, so it ended up being a non-issue. I was just curious, because it seemed wrong to discuss multiple motions simultaneously, but now I know better. Thank you!

At a contentious meeting last night, there was a motion and a subsidiary motion on the floor. One of the members was properly recognized and moved to "Call all the questions," to attempt shut down discussion of both motions. Is that in order?

So, if an election was out of order, the fairest way to remedy it would be to have another election?

Thank you Mr. Martin! Our bylaws are silent on the subject, but state law is not. I am trying to add bylaws on those topics that will hopefully keep future boards from innocently doing logical things instead of legal things.

Thank you both for taking the time to reply and for the feedback!

We have annual summer conventions. The officers are elected at our summer conventions that take place in odd numbered years. Per our bylaws, our summer convention can take place anywhere from April to July. So it is probable that the term might be slightly longer or shorter than 2 years. We want the officers to serve approximate 2 year terms. We also want the EC to have the power to accept resignations and appoint replacements. Those are processes are in different paragraphs, or at least they will be, but that's why the "full power" statement is here. Finally we want the officers we elect at convention to take office at the close of the convention, not when their successors are elected. We had a treasurer resign, and he held office until his successor was elected, so it seems like that needs to be in there somewhere too. Any suggestions appreciated. Thank you in advance.

The members have legitimate reasons to believe the Judicial Committee is not unbiased, nor are they convinced they are qualified to interpret parliamentary law, nor are they convinced the JC had the actual authority to overturn the vote of the body. The concept of a Judicial Committee is foreign to RONR, and as-such is probably off-topic. The JC powers in the bylaws are defined only as, "The Judicial Committee shall decide cases involving alleged violations of these bylaws or resolutions." There is no case to be had until an alleged violation actually occurs. The members feel the best way to interpret these ambiguities is, as per RONR, to allow the body to interpret them by a simple majority vote until the bylaws can be revised. That was the genesis of the petition.

Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed response! The more tenured members tell me that the Special Convention notice is intentionally short. The logic is that anything serious enough to warrant calling a special meeting is probably something that needs to be handled swiftly. For example, the last time this provision was exercised it was necessary to reconvene in order to correct a procedural error and re-nominate a candidate in accordance with state law. If the 60 day provision had been in effect, the candidate would not have been eligible to be on the ballot that year. In this instance, there is a large number of board seats vacant and the members want to vote for the replacements instead of having the Chair and the partially full board appoint them. Allowing Special Conventions to be held electronically in the future would solve a lot of the issues. It isn't something we do routinely; to the best of anybody's recollection, this is probably the 2nd time in 20 years. As an aside, based on the way things flow, I think the 60 day notice should be shortened to 45. That gives the affiliates 45 days and the members 30 days. The affiliates can submit their delegation up to 7 days in advance, so it's usually a last minute process anyway. Anyway, thanks again!

This question is related to another question but in the interest of brevity I created a different topic. The bylaws for our organization provide: The <organization> may hold electronic meetings for official party business of any recognized body of the State Party, including the Executive Committee as well as any committees created by the Executive Committee, unless specifically prohibited from doing so during their creation. Any official party business conducted via electronic means shall comply with Electronic Meetings section of the most current edition of Robert’s Rules of Order, Newly Revised. However, like everything else in our bylaws, it is not as straight forward as it would appear. In 2020, the organization knowingly broke the bylaws and held a convention electronically because COVID restrictions made it impossible to convene in person. In 2021, the members added the above text to the bylaws. The original text read "may hold electronic meetings and conventions for official party business..." with the words "and conventions" deleted during the discussion. The person recommending the deletion (who is the same person now arguing that the Special Convention cannot be electronic) did so with the caveat that the the "bylaws could be broken" for emergencies. Because our members place a very high value the in-person experience that the conventions provide and wanted to prevent conventions from being routinely held via Zoom in the future, the motion to remove the words passed, albeit with an understanding that "the bylaws could be broken." The video of the discussion is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgjplm1q9l4&t=5950s For clarity, my novice opinion is that despite the oral agreement that we can break the bylaws, we cannot actually break the bylaws and the convention must be held in person. However, I am getting pushback from people who are much better educated than I, using the logic that a chair refusing to hold a convention in 45 days is indeed an emergency.

Sorry this is so long: Our organization is in a bit of an uproar, with the biggest issue being that an unpopular and openly hostile Chair is currently in office. The board was served with a petition to hold a special meeting. Our bylaws address special conventions only in one single sentence, defining the process of calling a special convention as follows: The Party shall hold a special convention within 45 days upon the call of the Executive Committee or when petitions are submitted by 10% of the current membership, specifying the purpose for the special convention. Petitions were submitted, but at a local affiliate meeting, the Chair allegedly let it be known that he is not going to allow said convention to be called, as he has allegedly asserted that another section of the bylaws required a 60 day notice. As he is currently not communicating with the membership at large, we are not clear if he intends to deny the petition entirely or schedule it for a later date. In the section of our bylaws where the rules pertaining to the regularly occurring conventions are defined, the following two paragraphs appear: The Executive Committee shall notify every (local party) member and (national party resident in the state) member, whose dues were current within 3 years, of the convention date, time and location no less than 30 days prior to the convention. Notification shall be made by at least one of the acceptable modalities for which contact information has been made available by the member. Acceptable modalities shall include email, phone, and United States Postal Service. The Executive Committee shall issue a call to each state convention to all affiliates no later than 60 days prior to the scheduled date of the state convention, which call shall specify the date and location of the state convention and the number of delegates each affiliate is entitled to select and send to the state convention. Notwithstanding any provision of state law requiring the Executive Committee to set a single date for counties and districts to hold conventions for the selection of delegates, each affiliate may select the date for its respective convention(s), so long as that date is at least 7 days prior to the state convention. I would like to note here that at our 2021 convention, a motion to amend the bylaws and change the member notification from 30 days to 60 days was defeated by the members. The discussion against the motion was simply that the members thought that 30 days was sufficient notice. Here is a link to the part of the 2021 convention where the members specifically decided against requiring more than 30 days notice to members: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgjplm1q9l4&t=5840s My position is that a convention should be held within 45 days. The issue of interpretation could easily be settled by having the convention within the 45 days and allowing the members to vote that the 45 day requirement for Special Convention notice is in order. Also, I believe that such a motion would be in order at the Special Convention as it would specifically relate to the business at hand. As I have been delving into RONR and parliamentarian procedures for only about 90 days so far, I would appreciate stronger opinions than mine.

Can you please elaborate? I am in an organization that has in the past voted for a slate of candidates instead of electing them individually. Is it technically wrong? What would an objection to the motion look like?

Madisyn, I am on these forums in the same capacity as you. I know next to nothing about parliamentary procedure yet. Having said that, the advice you are getting about joining the forum as opposed to posting as a guest is something you should absolutely consider.