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pwilson

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Everything posted by pwilson

  1. I’m still confused about the mechanics: (1) Is it out of order even to propose striking a tellers’ report from the minutes? (2) Does such a proposal somehow become out of order only if someone objects to it? (3) Is a motion “to suspend the rules and strike the tellers’ report from the minutes” debatable? (4) Are the roughly two dozen items RONR requires to be in the minutes, as well as the handful of items the book says not to include in the minutes, all on the same footing insofar as they require suspension of the rules for any deviation from §48?
  2. Thanks for the clarification. I stand corrected. I'm getting the sense that my original reference to PL is a red herring and that any correction to the minutes, no matter how much it appears to suspend a rule (e.g., striking a tellers' report for a vote ordered to be counted or taken by ballot, inserting the secretary's opinion), is, if objected to, handled as an ordinary amendment--just as RONR says.
  3. Perhaps the member whose proposal to strike the tellers’ report from the minutes is objected to needs to move “to suspend the rules and correct the minutes by striking the tellers’ report.” That would accord with the spirit of General Robert’s answer, while following RONR to the letter. If the rule requiring tellers’ reports to be in the minutes ends up being suspended, then striking the tellers’ report can be handled as an ordinary amendment. If the bylaws require election by ballot, we have the thorny question of whether a tellers’ report is an essential element of a ballot vote. (See this thread.) To avoid any controversy involving bylaws, perhaps we can focus on the tellers’ report from a vote on a motion that the assembly ordered to be taken by ballot. It seems that the majority who ordered the ballot vote can be overridden by two thirds who wish to suspend the rules regarding which elements of that ballot vote go in the minutes. Would suspension of the rules be necessary for striking from the minutes the name of the maker of a main motion or for inserting a summary of a guest speaker’s remarks? Would suspension of the rules be sufficient for inserting the secretary’s opinion, which RONR says “the minutes should never reflect”? (p. 468, ll. 18-19).
  4. If a member proposes that the minutes be corrected (at the time of their approval) by striking out the tellers’ report from an election, and another member objects, does the correction require a two-thirds vote? PL says that “anything that the rules require to be in the minutes cannot be struck out, except by a two-thirds vote” (q. 248, p. 499), but RONR includes all corrections under the usual rules for amendment, i.e., majority vote ([11th ed.], p. 354, ll. 30-33). If a two-thirds vote is required to strike a tellers’ report, would it also be required to strike something more mundane, such as the name of the maker of a main motion? Similarly, what vote is required to correct the minutes by inserting something that RONR says should never be in the minutes, such as the secretary’s opinion, or something more mundane, such as a brief summary of a guest speaker’s remarks?
  5. I'm satisfied with this answer, which seems the safest option. Ideally, such rules would be unnecessary because of clear guidance on how authoritative the secretary's written draft is and how much discretion she has in correcting her private typographical errors. But perhaps actual parliamentary practice isn't (yet) consistent enough for such guidance to be warranted. I appreciate all of the above posts, which have helped me clarify my understanding of this topic.
  6. I doubt any assembly would want the secretary's verbal stumbling when reading the minutes to be taken literally. The reason she's reading the text is to put it before the assembly for approval. The text in such a case shouldn't be altered because of a careless or unintentional deviation while reading it. The problem I've been grappling with is different and derives from the fact that written documents contain information (spelling, punctuation, etc.) that oral statements of them normally do not. In the case under discussion ("Hers is the first written record. . . ."), I don't see how the spirit or the letter of the rules would be violated if the secretary silently corrects an obvious typo that she introduced and that she alone has seen, that the assembly has not seen (let alone explicitly approved), that does not change the reading or inaccurately alter the meaning, and that is caught in a timely manner (when she "is placing the approved minutes in her substantial binder"). I'm thinking of the really obvious cases here (two periods together, the spelling of someone's name) and wonder if the assembly's best interests are being served if their only options are keeping the secretary's errors in the minutes or going to the trouble of ASPA.
  7. Thanks. I had missed the distinction between "too trivial to bother with ASPA" (which others were presumably thinking) and "so trivial that the secretary may correct it" (which I was thinking). I understand that any written motion or report must be reproduced exactly in the minutes, but I'm still uncertain about the sort of case I raised above: In what meaningful sense has an assembly, in approving such minutes as read, approved typographical errors that only the secretary has seen and that have no effect on the wording as read aloud, the meaning of any statement, or the action taken by the assembly at the meeting in question?
  8. I can't think of a compelling reason either, yet the earlier posts emphasize that the secretary has no unilateral authority to make corrections to approved minutes--which is why I asked about the trivial extra period. Am I missing another way to correct approved minutes besides ASPA?
  9. Thanks for the helpful suggestions of remedies in cases in which the assembly suspects a problem and asks for written copies of a motion or the minutes. If no one suspects a problem, however, the secretary’s choice of punctuation may alter the meaning of a motion in a way that causes problems only much later. But perhaps that’s a reasonable price to pay for having written records of oral/aural meetings. Two follow-up questions: (1) Am I understanding correctly that the written version of a motion, if there is one, is definitive with respect to punctuation and the like, including obvious typographical errors? Am I missing a passage in RONR to that effect? (2) A totally different scenario: suppose the secretary is placing the approved minutes in her substantial binder when she notices an obvious typo, e.g., two periods at the end of a sentence instead of one. Hers is the first written record of the motion containing the typo, and the minutes were approved as read, without written copies having been distributed and without anyone knowing about the typo. Is the only recourse to Amend Something Previously Adopted?
  10. I’m concerned about features of a motion other than its exact wording that are recorded in the minutes and that might affect its meaning, e.g., punctuation, capitalization, italics used for emphasis, and the spelling of homophones. The secretary, when recording a motion in her written draft of the minutes, reproduces the exact spoken words used by the chair when putting the question but often has no guidance regarding the exclusively written features listed above. Similarly, the assembly, when approving the official written minutes, normally has to go on only what it hears when the minutes are read and may be unaware of these written features. Hence, features of a motion that could be significant or controversial may become part of the official record without anyone but the secretary having seen them. Am I missing some precaution in RONR that guards against this possibility? Written text is associated with some motions—e.g., in the written notice of the exact wording of a bylaw amendment; in copies of a resolution or complex motion given to the chair, secretary, and/or assembly; and in a written committee report than contains a motion. In such cases, what authority does such text (i.e., those parts of it that were not amended during debate) carry regarding the exclusively written features listed above? In preparing a draft of the minutes, for example, may the secretary correct typographical errors that have no effect on the wording in which the chair put the question and that the secretary believes have no effect on meaning? Indeed, may the secretary make such corrections after the minutes have been approved by the assembly as read (in cases in which no written draft has been distributed)?
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