Privileged motions as ordinary motions

[Guest SW]

If privileged motions are made without pending question on floor, are they treated as ordinary motions subjected to debates and amendments?

[Trina]

When no question is pending, some of the privileged motions appear to have main motion equivalents which are both debatable and amendable. A motion calling for the orders of the day, and an ordinary motion to adjourn don't seem to have a debatable/amendable form. The motions to recess and to fix the time to which to adjourn are amendable (not debatable) even when made as privileged motions.

Is there a particular reason for your question?

[Guest Learning]

Is there a particular reason for your question?

Parliamentary skills competition I'd guess

[Guest SW]

I am studying parliamentary authority in preparing for exam and am having trouble understanding how to handle privileged/subsidary/incidental motions when there is no pending question on the floor. I understand that incidental main motions are incidental motions that are treated as main motions when there is no pending question on the floor. Am I correct? Any help in clarifying this subject will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[Gary c Tesser]

... [snip] I understand that incidental main motions are incidental motions that are treated as main motions when there is no pending question on the floor. Am I correct? ....

I wouldn't say so. I think it is more easily understandable if we see that incidental main motions are one kind of main motion; they are main motions, period, even though they obviously do have some resemblances to the subsidiary motions.

Now, an entirely different question is "how to handle privileged/subsidary/incidental motions when there is no pending question on the floor" (although yes, there are resemblances there, too). (But I trust you'll forgive my resting a while before I go into that.)

* * *

As it happens, I'm now wondering: If a motion to adjourn is made when no question is pending, and a member believes there is still business that the assembly should deal with at this meeting, is there a way for the member to convey that concern to others, so that they vote down to motion to adjourn; and if there is such a way, what is it?

Obviously, the member can, as an inquiry, ask the chair this question, and hope that the other members get the hint. I'd like something more aboveboard and direct, though.

[Gary c Tesser]

Here's a couple more building blocks to the edifice.

1. (The easy one.) When a motion is still only a secondary motion (i.e., one of the "privileged/subsidiary/incidental motions"*), and it is pending without anything else, it is treated just the same as when it is moved while another motion is pending.

(There might be exceptions. But my first thought of what one of them might be was wrong. I was thinking of Amend as a subsidiary motion when nothing else is pending. But no, that would not be the subsidiary motion: it would have to be the the Incidental MAIN motion (IMM) called Amending Something Previously Adopted (ASPA, to its friends), because, what is there to Amend if we don't have something handy lying around, except for something previously adopted?)

2. Perhaps the main problem here is our starting point: how we are to determine when a motion whose name sounds like a secondary motion's name (some prime examples, to my mind: assigning a proposal to a committee, limiting debate, recessing, suspending the rules, determining method of voting), moved when nothing else is pending, is still a secondary motion, and when the motion is actually a full-fledged main motion (an incidental main motion). A few years ago, Dan Seabold said something that I took to mean that we should think of any of them as simply real secondary motions except when we have a really good reason to think they're main motions. That suggestion surprised me, and I'm still working through its permutations and implications with my pernoctations and cranial cavitations, but I try to go by it. (Please ignore the middle part of the previous sentence. Yes, only the middle part.)

_______

* See chart, top of p. 59. Of course, when I first read it, it was at the top of p. 58. Many of you first saw it in the 10th Edition, where it had had its brief promotion to p. 56 -- ah, the vicissitudes of fortune, thou fickle muse and mistress.

[Steven Britton]

I am studying parliamentary authority in preparing for exam and am having trouble understanding how to handle privileged/subsidary/incidental motions when there is no pending question on the floor. I understand that incidental main motions are incidental motions that are treated as main motions when there is no pending question on the floor. Am I correct? Any help in clarifying this subject will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

1. For each of the first five ranking subsidiary motions, their is a incident main motion of the same name that can be made when no other motions are pending. (RONR p. 66).

2. For the three highest ranking Priviledged Motions there are corresponding incident main motions of the same name.

(RONR, p. 68)

3. The Motion to suspend a standing rule at a meeting (with no motion pending), and a motion regarding how nominations are to be made (with no election pending) are examples of Incidental Main Motion. (RONR, p. 74)

4. Motions Relating To Methods Of Voting and the Polls (without a pending election) is an Incidental Main Motion (RONR, p. 283)

[Guest SW]

Finally, an answer I was looking for! I now understand better what incidental main motions are.

Thanks very much!

[Guest SW]

Finally, an answer I was looking for! I now understand better what incidental main motions are.

Thanks very much!

[Gary c Tesser]

Finally, an answer I was looking for! I now understand better what incidental main motions are.

Thanks very much!

Okay, what specifically did the trick?

[Gary c Tesser]

* * *

As it happens, I'm now wondering: If a motion to adjourn is made when no question is pending, and a member believes there is still business that the assembly should deal with at this meeting, is there a way for the member to convey that concern to others, so that they vote down to motion to adjourn; and if there is such a way, what is it?

Obviously, the member can, as an inquiry, ask the chair this question, and hope that the other members get the hint. I'd like something more aboveboard and direct, though.

Can someone help with this, please?

[Dan Honemann]

Can someone help with this, please?

Pages 238-39?

[Gary c Tesser]

Gary c Tesser, on 10 May 2012 - 12:21 PM, said:

Can someone help with this, please?

Pages 238-39?

That'll do. (Sheesh.)

[George Mervosh]

That'll do. (Sheesh.)

It's ok, you've been singularly focused on the top of p. 440 and the answer to this one wasn't there

[Guest SW]

If a motion to adjourn is made while there is no pending motion on the floor, the motion to adjourn is treated as a main motion that is subject to debate and amend. See page 68 lines 23-29.

This is the meaning of the incidental main motion. I had understood it wrong all along, and when I took a practice exam on motions, I did badly. When I re-read page 66 lines 17- 22 (for subsidiary motions) and page 68 lines 23-29 (for privileged motions), everything clicked.

Thanks to Steven Britton for referring to these pages.

[Dan Honemann]

If a motion to adjourn is made while there is no pending motion on the floor, the motion to adjourn is treated as a main motion that is subject to debate and amend. See page 68 lines 23-29.

This is the meaning of the incidental main motion. I had understood it wrong all along, and when I took a practice exam on motions, I did badly. When I re-read page 66 lines 17- 22 (for subsidiary motions) and page 68 lines 23-29 (for privileged motions), everything clicked.

Thanks to Steven Britton for referring to these pages.

I'm afraid that this is too much of a simplification. See the footnote on page 68, and page 234, lines 9-21.