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Request for Revote


Guest Herman S. Lilja

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A hand vote was taken as directed by the Moderator requiring a 2/3 majority. The outcome of the vote was 65.6% in favor of the motion. The moderator indicated that the motion failed. A voting participant directed a request to the moderator indicating that because the vote was so close he demanded a recount. After a few minutes of indecision, during which individuals from both factions left and returned to the voting area, the Moderator granted a second vote on the same issue. The second vote was 64.3% in favor of the motion. The motion failed; however, should the Moderator have permitted the second vote.

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Guest Herman S Lilja -

Permit me to try to apply everything that's been said here to your specific situation. While RONR does not allow a single member to demand a recount, it does allow for a single member to demand a 'division of the assembly' (or division) in cases where a voice vote or a vote by a show of hands (which RONR does not consider as a counted vote) is inconclusive. When a division is ordered, the vote is re-taken by asking each side of the question to stand, in turn, and be counted. A savvy chair could probably have asked the member demanding a recount, or perhaps assumed, that he was asking for a division. However, since you took the original vote as a counted vote, a division would not have been in order, as has been pointed out by George and Dan.

The other issue with your voting scenario is that it sound like it may not have been in keeping with RONR's prescription that a re-vote is never taken by the same method as the original vote. Thus, the assembly - but not an individual member - could have ordered a re-vote taken as a rising counted vote, a ballot vote, or even a roll-call vote, but certainly not by doing the same thing over again.

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Its bad enough when I don't mean to be wishy washy but I didn't think it was contagious. :)

Well, referring back to posts 9 and 11, I suppose what’s bothering me is that if a vote by show of hands has been counted, a demand for a Division is very apt to be dilatory. This is so because voting by show of hands is (or should be) limited to very small assemblies or committees where every member can clearly see every other member present (RONR, 11th ed., p. 47, ll. 11-18), and “When it is clear that there has been a full vote and there can be no reasonable doubt as to which side is in the majority, a call for a Division is dilatory, and the chair should not allow the individual member's right of demanding a Division to be abused to the annoyance of the assembly.” (RONR, 11th ed., p. 282, ll. 5-10.)

That said, as best I have been able to determine, it appears to me that if the demand for a Division is not dilatory (which may be the case, for example, if only a few of the members present have voted), it may be made even after a vote by show of hands has been counted, provided that it is made in a timely fashion. (cf. RONR, 11th ed., p. 411, ll. 15-19.)

But then again, um, uh .... :)

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To clarify, the voters were asked to stand to be counted separately, for and against, both initially and at the time of the second vote.

Aha - so what you actually took was a counted rising vote - twice. In this case, then I think that the demand for a division (and thus the re-vote) was not in order for two reasons: 1) the vote was already done by the method called for in a division, and 2) Dan's point about the demand for a division being dilatory probably applies.

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The outcome of the vote was 65.6% in favor of the motion.

The second vote was 64.3% in favor of the motion.

To clarify further, 268 people participated in these votes.

Well, if you need a two-thirds vote that means you need at least twice as many "yes" votes as "no" votes. So, with a total of 268, you'd need at least 179 affirmative votes. There's no need to calculate percentages at all. Keep it simple.

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