jkane1517

I again find myself asking the technical question first. Is the use of mute absolute or voluntary. That is to say in zoom, is mute applied unilaterally in a manner that the participants can not remove such as when zoom is setup in a webinar and mute is absolute? If so, the absolute application of mute would to me violate several areas of RRO as well as fundamental principles. Or is mute simply applied when people enter and as a special rule of order but can be remove by a member themselves should they need to make a point of order, appeal or even in a very rare case of having to take action if the chair abuses their basic duties. If a member must leave their screen for a moment on zoom and all of a sudden a very noisy lawnmower starts up right outside and you can't hear anything, since the normal online procedure would be for the chair or zoom host to mute the account that is disruptive when the zoom member has stepped out... Only the zoom member can unmute themselves upon their return. Seems like a reasonable way forward. In my view the only egregious issue is if the chair can unilaterally mute members who can not unmute and exercise certain parliamentary rights should the need arise. In an in person meeting, members may refrain from all sorts of actions, procedures etc but they retain the ability to exercise those rights should it be needed or in their view warranted. I'm simply proposing that the technical means of meeting online shouldn't limit those rights while at the same time recognizing muting a barking do or muting on entry may be a deciours way to conduct the meeting as well.

I should clarify that since I live in NY State, the state legislature has enacted laws that govern a few aspects of online meeting in various areas of the state code (POL, NPL etc) setting standards on what is required for online meetings. In NY State under article 6, non profits can conduct online or virtual meetings unless their bylaws prohibit such meetings. FOr a meeting of members there is one set of state laws and for meetings of the board a slightly different set of laws. Of course, this is NY state specific but to be clear in NY state, such meetings do not need to be authorized in the bylaws, but they can't be prohibited in order to hold and online/virtual meeting. So in the case of NY at least, state statute is the controlling authority at least initially.

Interesting thread... Reading through, I think there are two levels to this issue. On the first level, can a group adopt specific rules of order, not in conflict with fundamental principles or higher authorities that permit this zoom/online procedure. Yes, in principle the procedure as outlined here doesn't cause a problem as long as the participants can unmute themselves. My thinking is thus, the procedure is fine if the practice of having participants use emojis to be recognize by the chair unless the need arises to engage in rising for either a point of order or appeal or some urgent matter that requires interrupting the speaker. Take for example the issues raised in 62:7-9. These would almost always require that a member unmute and speak in a manner that didn't have recognition from the chair. Thus, in my view while I think the procedure itself is fine, it is an issue if members do not have the ability to unmute themselves. To summarize, another way, I think the issue isn't that members are muted on zoom, but do members have the ability to unmute themselves to exercise certain parliamentary rights? So it is not the issue of being muted, but the ability of members to unmute if needed.