NateB

You have already been of help Mr. Novosielski's first answer effectively led me to the answer of my question - I only replied to clarify your point since I had created some confusion. Apologies for the hassle, I appreciate everyone's help.

Apologies for my poor wording, hopefully I can clear up the confusion. Our elections are across several different constituencies, and in order for a Director of a particular constituency to be elected, they must meet a 10% quorum for that constituency ("Quorum shall be 10% of the general membership of the applicable constituency. A simple majority vote is required for a valid outcome.") What I was referring to was, for example, a Director of "ABC" constituency, where only 9% of "ABC" members voted, and therefore the required quorum was not met, and the Director would not be elected. My concern is that members would bring forward a motion (which would be out of order) to ratify the Directors anyways. This is a provision we allow only after our "Online Elections Contingency Plan" has been enacted, and in this case, it has not: "In the event that quorum is not reached by the end of the voting period of the Online Elections Contingency Plan, the Board of Directors shall have the authority to hold a vote to ratify the elections results without having reached quorum. This requires a two-thirds majority vote and can be applied only to Executive and Board of Directors positions."

Our conflict of interest policy (especially with elections) is specially defined in our bylaws, and I would say it's much broader than the rules in RONR, but the thing I am positive of is that suspension of quorum is not, so it should not be an option to even do that. We have a bylaw that does allow that for a different type of election, so I think the person was confused and thought it applied to all elections, but it does not. I mostly wanted to clarify the specifics of what technically happens when someone motions to do something that is simply not possible according to the bylaws. Your answer makes perfect sense, thank you If it is attempted, I will raise a Point of Order.

I am running in an election for our Board, and therefore have a conflict of interest for everything elections-related. However, some Directors have expressed that next meeting, when the election results would be ratified, they may attempt to suspend quorum to allow candidates who did not meet it to be ratified. However, our bylaws don't have a provision that specifically allows this, so my understanding of Robert's Rules is that this is not permitted. I will have to leave for the item's discussion due to my conflict, but am I allowed to object to the consideration of the question before entering debate to make the point that our bylaws do not allow this? Or would another Director need to raise that concern if the Chair does not flag it? Thanks!