Election of Officers with only 1 person standing position

[Guest Sandy_C]

The bylaws of an organization states:

Section 1. Election

A. Elective officers shall be elected at the Annual Session from eligible members in attendance, unless unavoidably absent.

B. Election shall be by ballot without nomination.

C. A majority vote of those present and voting shall elect.

Only ONE person stands for the open position. Let's say her name is "Jane".

There are 15 people present and eligible to vote. A majority would be 8.

When the votes are counted, only 5 ballots have the name of the person that stood for the open position: "Jane". All the other ballots are either BLANK, or say "Mickey Mouse", or someone's name that did not agree or submit their name for consideration.

Is "Jane" elected? Or, because of the bylaws requiring a Majority Vote of those present and voting, is there NO ELECTION?

[David A Foulkes]

The biggest question here is how many abstentions (blanks) there were. Do you know? If there were at least 6, Jane's a winner. If fewer than 6, it might also depend on what was written on the other ballots. If any of them had "No" or some variant (but not blank) they too would be considered abstentions, and the numbers change again. So, do you know what was on each and all the other ballots?

The difference here is the bylaw that says "present and voting". Abstentions are not votes. Therefore, if 6 members abstained, that means only 9 members were "present AND voting", a majority of which is five. All hail Jane!!

So, how many abstentions? and were there any "abstentions" in the other ballots (such as "No", "not her", etc)?

[Guest Sandy_C]

Do ballots with "Mickey Mouse" or other name other than "Jane" count or are they INVALID and handled the same way as BLANK votes?

If only ONE person is standing for the office - is there any way for them to LOSE as long as they vote for themselves?

[David A Foulkes]

Do ballots with "Mickey Mouse" or other name other than "Jane" count or are they INVALID and handled the same way as BLANK votes?

Well, for the most part such Mickey Mouse ballots are considered illegal votes but are in fact counted toward votes cast. Even ballots with other names, perhaps of members who are not eligible to serve for some reason, would count. So, the first question is how many abstained (blank ballots, for now)? Then, were any remaining ballots simply marked "no" or something similar? If you have at least six of these abstentions, Jane is a winner.

If only ONE person is standing for the office - is there any way for them to LOSE as long as they vote for themselves?

Well, maybe not so much that Jane would lose, but that you'd have an incomplete election. If both Jane and Mickey Mouse got 5 votes, then no one received a majority of votes cast and you have an incomplete election and must vote again, and again, until one eligible candidate receives a majority of votes cast.

Edited to remove the absurd reference to a tie between Jane and Mickey.

[Gary Novosielski]

The bylaws of an organization states:

Section 1. Election

A. Elective officers shall be elected at the Annual Session from eligible members in attendance, unless unavoidably absent.

B. Election shall be by ballot without nomination.

C. A majority vote of those present and voting shall elect.

Only ONE person stands for the open position. Let's say her name is "Jane".

There are 15 people present and eligible to vote. A majority would be 8.

When the votes are counted, only 5 ballots have the name of the person that stood for the open position: "Jane". All the other ballots are either BLANK, or say "Mickey Mouse", or someone's name that did not agree or submit their name for consideration.

Is "Jane" elected? Or, because of the bylaws requiring a Majority Vote of those present and voting, is there NO ELECTION?

Since your elections are "by ballot without nomination" it is not possible to correctly make the statement that only one person "stood" for the position, nor that someone "did not ... submit their name for consideration". Your bylaws say no nominations, so you can't make up some backdoor nomination process. Nobody is required to "stand" for election, nor to "submit their name". EVERYONE is a valid candidate, and no person is more of a "candidate" than anyone else.

So now you're counting the ballots. Blank ballots and "No" ballots are abstentions, treat them like blank scrap paper, they are not true ballots.

Ballots with names on them are considered votes. If they are names of real human beings, they are legal votes, as long as they are cast by legal voters. Count them, and if any of them gets a majority, they're elected. Votes for fictitious entities, such as cartoon mice are illegal votes, but if they are cast by legal voters they DO count as ballots. Count up all the ballots, divide by two, and the next whole number MORE than that is the number needed to elect.

If nobody gets that number or more, the election is incomplete, and another round of voting occurs. Rinse. Repeat. Until the election is complete, it's incomplete, and must be completed. Eventually the members will wish to see their loved ones again, and will reach a compromise. If it takes till the eighth ballot, they will learn something about democracy.

---

"But, on the other hand, Uncle Abner said that the person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn't, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful."

--TOM SAWYER ABROAD by MARK TWAIN [samuel Clemens, 1894]