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I have two related questions about balloted elections and business sessions in a church setting. We have three worship services each weekend. We do balloted elections for two items a year: approval of the budget and election of deacons. In the case of the budget, all discussion and amendments has been done in a single business session the weekend before. In the case of the deacons, a slate is presented to the church via publications and then voted on. (The bylaws specify that the slate as brought by the nominating committee is the only persons that can be voted on, as the nomination process has been completed before.) In both cases, at each service we call the church into business meeting, hand out ballots, vote, collect the ballots, and adjourn the meeting. Having recently been made moderator, I have had to brush up on my Robert's, so I am aware that we are actually holding separate "meetings" within one "session." Here are my two questions: 1. Since the only item of business is the ballot vote, we are in effect only holding an election. Is it necessary to actually call the church into business session, or can we just hold the election by passing out and collecting the ballots? 2. At this year's budget discussion, I led the body to use the motion "fix the time to which to adjourn" to end the discussion business session and specify that we would vote that coming weekend. Was this the correct motion to use? Thank you, in advance, for any advice you can give this new moderator.

Are members of a board of a club who participate in an executive session meeting held to a standard regarding the confidentiality of the discussion in executive session? If a board member reveals to an outside party details of a discussion held in executive session, what remedies are available to the board/organization?