Why a recount?

[Gary c Tesser]

Re. thread http://robertsrules.forumflash.com/index.php?/topic/20935-election-of-an-illegal-nominee-to-office/ ... from about five weeks ago.

 

I've been mulling on this (being a slow and ponderous thinker, of dour and lugubrious mien), and it looks ineluctable (it's barely February) that Dan Honemann and  John Stackpole have to have it wrong.  Mr Honemann's Post 7 seems the crux, and his noble if quixotic defense of the indefatigable (let us not say interminable) ditherings of the ubiquitous Tesser person just cannot hold up.

 

The only purpose of a recount can be to correct any errors in the tabulation.  But nobody has suggested that there were any errors in the tabulation, per se.  (The votes that were cast for Member A were the votes that were cast for Member A: it's not just ineluctable, it's a teleology; the votes that were cast for Member A are illegal, and that's not disputed; the number of votes that were cast for Member A is equal to, or the same as, the number of votes that will now be listed, instead, as illegal votes, according to what I vaguely remember from the second or third grade as the commutative law of addition, or maybe it was associative law or distributive law.  Kinda odd how whichever of those words they called it, you never came across that word again in your life through and beyond your post-doc work.  Perhaps the only point was to confuse little kids about a simple matter of adding three numbers together in any order (e.g., 5 + 7 + 3 will, mirabile dictu (as they later said over and over in the 4th grade) result in the same sum as 7 + 3 + 5), so as to justify requiring teachers of second-grade to be college graduates and to be paid almost as much as mail sorters.) 

 

What needs to be done is to look at the tellers's report, transfer the votes cast for ineligible Member A (or "Fred," as Dr Stackpole unimaginatively and pointlessly renamed him) onto the list of illegal votes, and do any necessary arithmetic.  We can do that with the ballot box tied up and sitting there on the secretary's table, with no need to touch it; indeed, recounting the ballots would be as pointless an exercise as, oh, renaming people who already have a member's letter designation, which perhaps is done to require us to be college graduates and paid maybe almost as much as mail sorters except if we regularly post on the Robert's Rules Website Forum (RONR MB).

 

None of that would have any effect on the votes cast for any other candidate (the only reason to recount, per my posts 2 and 8 on that thread 20935).

 

Or am I missing something like Mr Honemann being nice because it'll be my birthday this year.

[jstackpo]

Putting Capt. Dan and me in the same boat (I actually was once, and a most pleasant journey on the Chesapeake it was) may cause one or the other of us to get riled up (I consider myself to be in very good company, can't speak for the Admiral), but I think your arithmetic and reasoning are correct.

 

If the tellers had been alert as to Fred's lack of required formal qualifications, they would have placed all of Fred's votes in the illegal category as they were being counted (e.g., "Mr. Friend", on p. 417) resulting in an incomplete election - no majority winner.  

 

However, the fact that, as implied in the original posting last December, the chair (presumably) declared Fred elected after the "revote" (improper though that was), there is a problem.  While this clearly causes a continuing breach to come into existence (p. 251, line 9), it wasn't recognized as such at the time (does the falling tree in the forest make a sound?) and it won't get resolved and corrected unless something is done, next meeting. A point of order, perhaps?  But what point of order?  There was nothing wrong with the process as described: voting, counting, reporting, declaring the winner (except that it was done twice, but that in itself does not rise to the level of a continuing breach).  It was only post facto and post election meeting, when someone finally read the bylaws, that Fred's ineligibility was realized and the continuing breach came to light.

 

Ordering a recount is an easy unambiguous way out.  This time the tellers will properly categorize the votes for Fred as illegal, declare there was no election, and the association can do it all over again.  From scratch.

[Dan Honemann]

In that thread I said that there was nothing wrong with your initial response (post #2). Apparently you think that there is. Okay, let's look again at that response of yours, taking one sentence at a time.

 

"If Member A is really truly ineligible to serve, then the votes that were cast for him were illegal votes (and count as such)."

 

What's wrong with this?

[Gary c Tesser]

In that thread I said that there was nothing wrong with your initial response (post #2). Apparently you think that there is. Okay, let's look again at that response of yours, taking one sentence at a time.

 

"If Member A is really truly ineligible to serve, then the votes that were cast for him were illegal votes (and count as such)."

 

What's wrong with this?

 

Fine by me so far.

 

I'll maybe save you a lot of typing or computer legerdemain by giving the next sentence (thread 20935, if that enumeration works, post 2):  "If the ballots have been retained securely, the membership assembly can order a recount."

 

-- And perhaps anticipate your next "What's wrong with this?":  it's technically true, but not germane, which I took to be the thrust of your Post 7 (in 20935). ... Wasn't it?

 

[Edited to fix punctuation]

[Dan Honemann]

Fine by me so far.

 

I'll maybe save you a lot of typing or computer legerdemain by giving the next sentence (thread 20935, if that enumeration works, post 2):  "If the ballots have been retained securely, the membership assembly can order a recount."

 

-- And perhaps anticipate your next "What's wrong with this?":  it's technically true, but not germane, which I took to be the thrust of your Post 7 (in 20935). ... Wasn't it?

 

[Edited to fix punctuation]

 

That second sentence is not just technically true, it is absolutely true. The membership's assembly can certainly order a recount, and, as your response subsequently recognizes, ordering a recount may prove to have been a wise thing to do.

[Gary c Tesser]

...  ordering a recount may prove to have been a wise thing to do.

 

That's what I'm not seeing.

[Dan Honemann]

That's what I'm not seeing.

 

"If, in the recount, someone else gets more than half of the votes cast (votes for Member A add into the total, but won't help anyone be elected, remember), he's elected ..."

 

You saw this rather clearly when you posted this in your response.

[Gary c Tesser]

"If, in the recount, someone else gets more than half of the votes cast (votes for Member A add into the total, but won't help anyone be elected, remember), he's elected ..."

 

You saw this rather clearly when you posted this in your response.

 

But everybody will get the same number of votes as in the first count!  As far as we're concerned, the first count itself was flawless!  Unimpeachable!  (It looks like Gregory Peck!*)  Nothing in a recount will change what it says on the tellers' report (because the votes for Member A that, in the recount, we credit as illegal votes, are the same votes on the tellers' report for Member A that we will still, equally, transfer on that document to the list of illegal votes).

_______

* Or you on a boat!

[Gary c Tesser]

O, and

"to the list of illegal votes)."

... should be --

"to the list of illegal votes)!!"

[Dan Honemann]

 

But everybody will get the same number of votes as in the first count!  As far as we're concerned, the first count itself was flawless!  Unimpeachable!  (It looks like Gregory Peck!*)  Nothing in a recount will change what it says on the tellers' report (because the votes for Member A that, in the recount, we credit as illegal votes, are the same votes on the tellers' report for Member A that we will still, equally, transfer on that document to the list of illegal votes).

_______

* Or you on a boat!

 

I think it marvelous that you now know with such absolute certainty, before a recount is taken, that if it is taken "everybody will get the same number of votes as in the first count!" We who are mere mortals (including Arick Decker and the other members of his organization, I suppose) lack this ability. As far as we're concerned, we have no way of knowing that the first count itself was flawless, and so we may, upon occasion, order a recount.

 

There is nothing in what Arick Decker posted in the other thread suggesting that, if a recount is taken, there is an absolute certainty that everybody will get the same number of votes as in the first count.

[Gary c Tesser]

!But that's not the point, and has never been the point.  The only reason anyone is thinking about ordering a recount is because of the bad votes for Fred.  Nobody has proposed any other error in the tellers' tally.  So the simple, arithmetical re-tallying of the Member A (okay, "Fred" to college graduates) votes over to the illegal-votes column has nothing to do with counting the ballots.  Indeed, if we were to unearth any discrepancy between the original count and the recount, it would be happenstance and surprising.

 

We are only thinking about going to the trouble of recounting because of the discovery that votes for Fred were illegal.  Is that not true?  If otherwise, why don't we always recount?  It is so, isn't it, that recounts are only useful if mistakes in the count are suspected?

 

(Oh, and on the Wrath Scale, from 1 to 10, how would you rate the sarcasm in Post 10?  It looks like maybe a 3 to me.)

[Dan Honemann]

!But that's not the point, and has never been the point.  The only reason anyone is thinking about ordering a recount is because of the bad votes for Fred.  Nobody has proposed any other error in the tellers' tally.  So the simple, arithmetical re-tallying of the Member A (okay, "Fred" to college graduates) votes over to the illegal-votes column has nothing to do with counting the ballots.  Indeed, if we were to unearth any discrepancy between the original count and the recount, it would be happenstance and surprising.

 

We are only thinking about going to the trouble of recounting because of the discovery that votes for Fred were illegal.  Is that not true?  If otherwise, why don't we always recount?  It is so, isn't it, that recounts are only useful if mistakes in the count are suspected?

 

(Oh, and on the Wrath Scale, from 1 to 10, how would you rate the sarcasm in Post 10?  It looks like maybe a 3 to me.)

 

The point is that there was nothing wrong in your initial response to the question asked in the other thread.

[Gary c Tesser]

Thanks for the six-rounds.... I'll be mulling for a while now.  (Remember the thunder and lightning over "the board fills vacancies in all offices," from around 2003 - 4?)

 

[Edited to add pugilistic metaphor]

["Add" not used in parliamentary sense.]

[Dan Honemann]

The only reason anyone is thinking about ordering a recount is because of the bad votes for Fred. 

 

You have absolutely no way of knowing this.

 

 

We are only thinking about going to the trouble of recounting because of the discovery that votes for Fred were illegal.  Is that not true? 

 

Not if the "we" includes me.

 

 

It is so, isn't it, that recounts are only useful if mistakes in the count are suspected?

 

Perhaps, but mistakes in the count are often "suspected" when the vote is close, and if you look again at the facts in the thread to which you refer, I think you will agree that it is very likely that the candidate declared the winner won by a very slim margin.

 

 

Bottom line - there was nothing wrong in your initial response to the question asked in the other thread.

[Timothy]

This seems to be a case that whether we have reason to believe there are mistakes in counting or not, it is our desire that there were. While a recount will do nothing for us if the original count is correct, the chance of a mistake is just large enough in a close vote that doing a recount may save us the trouble of revoting.

[Rev Ed]

I am just thinking here, and please don't jump  on me for thinking outside the box a bit here, but if Member A/Fred is not eligible to run, then anyone who voted for him would likely have either voted for someone else or abstained if Fred's name was not on the Ballot.  While Fred may have received a couple of write-in votes (not likely, but possible in RONR land.) 

 

So, would it not be easier to simply hold another ballot vote at the next meeting?

 

All of this discussion is great, but no one seems to realize that many of the votes Fred received would not have been 'invalid' had Fred's name not been on the ballot - people would likely have voted for someone else. 

[Dan Honemann]

All of this discussion is great, but no one seems to realize that many of the votes Fred received would not have been 'invalid' had Fred's name not been on the ballot - people would likely have voted for someone else. 

 

Oh, I don't think there is reason to believe that this has escaped our notice.

[Timothy]

I am just thinking here, and please don't jump  on me for thinking outside the box a bit here, but if Member A/Fred is not eligible to run, then anyone who voted for him would likely have either voted for someone else or abstained if Fred's name was not on the Ballot.  While Fred may have received a couple of write-in votes (not likely, but possible in RONR land.) 

 

So, would it not be easier to simply hold another ballot vote at the next meeting?

 

All of this discussion is great, but no one seems to realize that many of the votes Fred received would not have been 'invalid' had Fred's name not been on the ballot - people would likely have voted for someone else. 

 

That is why we can't just throw out the votes for Fred and take the next highest. But if the recount shows that someone other than Fred had a majority, then it doesn't matter how the people who voted for Fred would have voted, because even if all of them vote for the same someone else, that somone else will not have a majority.

[Gary c Tesser]

You people are beating this into the ground.