Uncontested Election

[walterlm]

I had a situation where only one person was nominated for each of several officer positions. A motion was made at the proper time to have the Secretary cast a unanimous ballot for the uncontested slate. The motion was denied. As the officer running the election I ordered a vote on each candidate individually. Two of the single nominees were not elected during the individual vote. First, was this the proper procedure to follow and second, when there is an uncontested position, is that candidate automatically elected by acclimation?

[Gary Novosielski]

I had a situation where only one person was nominated for each of several officer positions. A motion was made at the proper time to have the Secretary cast a unanimous ballot for the uncontested slate. The motion was denied. As the officer running the election I ordered a vote on each candidate individually. Two of the single nominees were not elected during the individual vote. First, was this the proper procedure to follow and second, when there is an uncontested position, is that candidate automatically elected by acclimation?

Several things went wrong.

If your bylaws require election by ballot, then you would have no option except to have a ballot election, even for uncontested seats.

If your bylaws do not require an election by ballot or have an exception in the case of a single nominee, you could have declared, in each case, that the sole nominee was "elected by acclamation". This would still be subject to a motion for a ballot vote, however.

The whole bit about the secretary voting and making things unanimous is largely superfluous nonsense. And it causes trouble, as you've seen, if it is voted down.

Now, when you held a vote on each candidate individually, how did you manage to end up with the only candidate not elected? I hope you did not have a "Yes/No" vote on any candidate, because that is entirely improper. The only way to vote No on a candidate is to vote for someone else. "No" votes are to be treated as abstentions, so the candidate should have been elected anyway. But that's water under the bridge. If the election was incomplete, you still need to complete it.

What you should have done was held a ballot vote for the uncontested-but-somehow-disputed offices. Blank slips of paper would do fine. Then the people who didn't like the sole candidate could have voted for somebody else. Failure to elect is not an option.

And finally, if you're not the president, you should not have been "running the election" in the first place.

But outside of that it went fairly well.

[Josh Martin]

And finally, if you're not the president, you should not have been "running the election" in the first place.

Well, we don't know that for sure. The President may have been absent.