Rescind election of officer

[Guest Lola]

We are a small regional trade association. The Board held elections for 2012 officers at their meeting last week. One group of board members is unhappy with election results for one of the positions and wants to undo it. There is no question about any irregularity with the election process, no one is alleging improprieties.... they just don't like the person who was elected and don't want her in office.

I've been reading everything I can find on how they could possibly go about rescinding the election, but its confusing. Any help offered is appreciated.

[Gary c Tesser]

[snip]

They would have to have a real good case. Looks as if they don't.

(Was the winner present, or if not, has he or she been notified?)

[Gary Novosielski]

.... they just don't like the person who was elected and don't want her in office.

Well, apparently a majority did want her in office, or she would not have ended up in office.

It's time for the "one group" to stop whining.

[Guest Lola]

They would have to have a real good case. Looks as if they don't.

(Was the winner present, or if not, has he or she been notified?)

Thanks Gary. Yes, the winner was present so she knows she won. Now (a week later) the "other side" is contesting the election. A Board member and I counted the ballots and I gave the tally sheet to the Pres to announce results. The Pres has been calling board members this week asking them how they voted and now is saying the election couldn't be right - we must have made amistake - and wants the election redone. geez.

[Chris Harrison]

Thanks Gary. Yes, the winner was present so she knows she won. Now (a week later) the "other side" is contesting the election. A Board member and I counted the ballots and I gave the tally sheet to the Pres to announce results. The Pres has been calling board members this week asking them how they voted and now is saying the election couldn't be right - we must have made amistake - and wants the election redone. geez.

The reason for holding a vote by ballot is so a member can feel free to vote their conscience without the others knowing how they voted. It is blatantly improper for the President to be asking anyone how they voted when it was held by secret ballot (not to mention did he REALLY expect everyone to tell him the truth on how they voted???). First, this group of Board members should be told that the election was validly conducted and there will be no revote just because they don't like the results. To quote my uncle Louie "that is just tough tortellini". Second, the President needs a swift kick in his "six" for even thinking of asking people to tell him what their secret vote was. See FAQ #20.

[Gary Novosielski]

The Pres has been calling board members this week asking them how they voted and now is saying the election couldn't be right - we must have made amistake - and wants the election redone. geez.

The President should be censured at least, and removed from office at most, for such reprehensible behavior.

[JohnR]

Is privately asking a member how she or he voted a punishable offense? Isn't it akin to asking, "How much salary are you paid?" The respondent is free to answer, dodge, or refuse the question. This is the flip side of the advice often given that members are free to communicate privately with one another independent of the rules of order.

[Chris Harrison]

Is privately asking a member how she or he voted a punishable offense? Isn't it akin to asking, "How much salary are you paid?" The respondent is free to answer, dodge, or refuse the question. This is the flip side of the advice often given that members are free to communicate privately with one another independent of the rules of order.

I understand what you are saying but I think there are two things that make it more than just asking about salary. First, this is the President asking and most members unless they really understand their rights and have the backbone to stand up for them will think that the President being someone "in authority" has a right to that information and that they must answer the question where they would feel more free to tell any other member to mind their own darn business. Second, this is not a question of idle curiosity but the President is planning on using the information he gets in asking the question to throw out a perfectly valid election (unless there is more that we haven't heard about) because there are some discontented members who didn't like the outcome of the election. Adding those two together I think that there was an intentional or unintentional misuse of the (perceived) authority of the office of the President which can't go unaddressed.

I don't know if the President necessarily needs to be removed from office for this but he needs to be made aware that as Uncle Ben so wisely said "with great (perceived) power comes great responsibility" and I learned that lesson several years back. When I was elected Chair of a Council for the first time we were having problems getting members on some of our committees and I in jest said that we needed some volunteers or I would start having to draft people. Needless to say I found out that people had taken me seriously though I had no such authority (and would not have done so even if I did) and I was diplomatically reminded that as Chair I am viewed as in a position of authority and that I needed to be careful about what I said or did with that hat on. This President needs that same reminder.

[Gary c Tesser]

Thanks Gary. Yes, the winner was present so she knows she won. Now (a week later) the "other side" is contesting the election. A Board member and I counted the ballots and I gave the tally sheet to the Pres to announce results. The Pres has been calling board members this week asking them how they voted and now is saying the election couldn't be right - we must have made am istake - and wants the election redone. geez.

But Lola, if the president is saying the results cannot be right, then you can't say that "There is no question about any irregularity with the election process, no one is alleging improprieties," can you? The president apparently is. Have you retained the ballots securely, so that they could be recounted if the membership were persuaded to order a recount?

If we are assuming good faith all over the place, then I bet the president sincerely believes the results you came up with are skewed somehow. So he asked around (perhaps inappropriately wearing his president hat, but still). So if he has accumulated a stack of voters who are willing to say "I darn well did not vote that way," and if there are enough of them to have made a difference in the electoin results, then the validity of the election might indeed be challenged. (If I were you, Lola, and apparently I could do a lot worse, I would make sure that I was ready to come up against any such challenge being confident that it is not a personal affront, though it might superficially look like it. Like some ruling by a chairperson being overturned on appeal. Nothing personal: move on.)

Or maybe not. Why don't you try phoning the president and ask him what he meant. Except then maybe Chris and Gary Novosielski would have you thrown to the parliamentary crocodiles. Or me.

[Edited to fix Guest Lola's typo "amistake," forgive the impertinence. Or is it effrontery, I can never get those two straight. But typos give me conniptoins.]

[Gary Novosielski]

So if he has accumulated a stack of voters who are willing to say "I darn well did not vote that way," and if there are enough of them to have made a difference in the election results, then the validity of the election might indeed be challenged.

Really? They might just feel pressured into giving the President the answer he wants to hear, rather than telling him their real vote, with the assurance that nobody can prove anything either way.

I'd believe a bona fide recount, presuming the ballots were stored securely, but I don't think an informal telephone straw poll is even close to being sufficient evidence to challenge anything.

[Gary c Tesser]

Really? They might just feel pressured into giving the President the answer he wants to hear, rather than telling him their real vote, with the assurance that nobody can prove anything either way.

I'd believe a bona fide recount, presuming the ballots were stored securely, but I don't think an informal telephone straw poll is even close to being sufficient evidence to challenge anything.

Yes, I don't like it either. But Gary, you quoted me about a number of voters willing to go on the record that they voted such that the tally must be wrong. Not a straw vote. If this organization has voters willing to lie this way, and if they do lie this way, feeling pressured or not, then I think that proper procedure will dictate that the liars and the pressurers will win. They will have satisfactorily documented, falsely or no, that the election results were fraudulent. P. 244? Try (e), the basic right that a ballot will not be falsified; or (d), that the results are the results (someone have Gary Novosielski's grandfather chime in here, please), and untrue reporting of them will fall to the ground in the face of the truth. -- Even though, perversely and perhaps ironically, if I remember the nuances of what that is, it's the other way around.

But all this is getting theosophical, in the unlikely event I remember what that means. It is simply more likely that our esteemed correspondent Guest Lola, whose welcome posts we see all too infrequently on this, the Robert's Rules Website Forum (RONR MB), which circumstance I encourage her to redress, did accurately count the ballots, and that the president, assuming good faith, simply finds the results incomprehensible, like when I have to walk in the street all the time looking down, and often am confronted with the inconceivable, yet undeniable, evidence that lots of people simple don't have the civility to clean up after their dogs. The president thinks, what's wrong with those people? I cannot believe that they voted that way! Maybe this resembles cognitive dissonance, I remember clearly what that is up to the moment I close the dictionary and resume typing.

[David A Foulkes]

.....and if there are enough of them to have made a difference in the electoin results....

[Edited to fix Guest Lola's typo "amistake," forgive the impertinence. Or is it effrontery, I can never get those two straight. But typos give me conniptoins.]

Standable

That's

[Dan Honemann]

As noted in post #10, if the ballots have been kept in a secure fashion, any disgruntled member of the board, at the boards next meeting, can move that the ballots be recounted, and if this motion is adopted (majority vote required) they can be recounted. Otherwise, it's time to move on.

None of this business about how members now say they voted matters in the least.

[Gary Novosielski]

As noted in post #10, if the ballots have been kept in a secure fashion, any disgruntled member of the board, at the boards next meeting, can move that the ballots be recounted, and if this motion is adopted (majority vote required) they can be recounted. Otherwise, it's time to move on.

None of this business about how members now say they voted matters in the least.

Sometimes I get one right.

It's worth remembering that in ballot voting there are actually two reasons for secrecy of the ballot, and well-designed voting systems accommodate both:

One of them, the obvious one, is to keep secret the vote of a voter who does not choose to reveal how she voted.

But the other one, in my view just as important, is to prevent someone who does choose to reveal how she voted from being able to actually prove it. This is not just a side-effect, it is by design, for it acts to discourage the practice of "selling" votes for money or other inducement. The buyer cannot be certain of ever receiving what he paid for, and the seller cannot provide proof of delivery for what she sold. Yes, there are some ways around this, but they add to the inconvenience and the risk.

A voter can say what they like after a ballot vote. It falls in the same category as the 48 million people who claim they were at Woodstock.