Board Elections by E-mail Vote

[rhdz13]

Chapter Board Elections are coming up on Wednesday, and some members will not be able to attend, due to Chapter assigned business.

A request was made to "allow" for these members to vote via "e-mail".

This request came after the last Board meeting, and did not allow for this discussion to take place during the regular Board meeting.

An e-mail was sent to the Board, by a standing Board member (up for re-election), to "poll" the remaining Board members, whether to allow for this type of "e-mail" balloting.

Is this process "valid", --- eventhough a similar request was denied last year?

Does the President have the ability to "VETO", and by what process?

[Chris Harrison]

Voting by e-mail (or any form of absentee voting) is not permitted unless the bylaws specifically provides for it (RONR pp. 408-409).

[Gary Novosielski]

Chapter Board Elections are coming up on Wednesday, and some members will not be able to attend, due to Chapter assigned business.

A request was made to "allow" for these members to vote via "e-mail".

This request came after the last Board meeting, and did not allow for this discussion to take place during the regular Board meeting.

An e-mail was sent to the Board, by a standing Board member (up for re-election), to "poll" the remaining Board members, whether to allow for this type of "e-mail" balloting.

Is this process "valid", --- eventhough a similar request was denied last year?

Does the President have the ability to "VETO", and by what process?

None of this is anything near valid.

E-mail voting is prohibited by RONR. So if your bylaws do not authorize it now, the only way to "allow" it is with a bylaws amendment. And it sounds like it's too late for that.

"Polling" board members is not allowed, and does not constitute a legal meeting. Voting takes place in a properly called meeting at which a quorum is present.

I think I know how I would vote on this guy's candidacy.

The president should simply deny (or ignore) the request, because since none of this is taking place in a meeting, there is no place even to issue a ruling. Or the president can simply let everyone know that this whole idea is so far out of order that any decision reached by this method would be null and void anyway.

[Kim Goldsworthy]

Does the President have the ability to "VETO", and by what process?

In general:

You won't find the word "veto" in the 700+ pages of RONR [10th ed.].

Presidents (or chairmen) have no power to veto anything, under the default rules of Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised.

See RONR for (a.) points of order; (b.) appeals; whereby a kind of veto is executed, but not unilaterally by the chair.

[Gary Novosielski]

See RONR for (a.) points of order; (b.) appeals; whereby a kind of veto is executed, but not unilaterally by the chair.

Well, in this case where candidates are sending out e-mails asking for e-mail straw polls to be binding, I think the chair can unilaterally call them crazy and ignore the whole request.