Voting - 50% plus one of an uneven number

[Guest Ruth]

If a constitution calls for a 50% plus one majority when voting, what is the number required when the number eligible to vote is an uneven number? In other words, if there are 11 eligible to vote, is 50% plus one equal to 6 or 7?

[Josh Martin]

If a constitution calls for a 50% plus one majority when voting, what is the number required when the number eligible to vote is an uneven number? In other words, if there are 11 eligible to vote, is 50% plus one equal to 6 or 7?

 

It's ultimately up to your organization to interpret its own rules (see RONR, 11th ed., pgs. 588-591 for some Principles of Interpretation), but "50% + 1" of 11 would mean you would need at least 6.5 votes. So that would be seven. A majority, however, is "more than half," which is not necessarily the same as 50% + 1. A majority of 11 would be 6. Also, unless your rules provide otherwise, the requirement is based on the number of members present and voting, not on all members eligible to vote.

 

See FAQ #4, FAQ #5 and FAQ #6.

[Gary c Tesser]

I'll point out that, while of course Josh Martin's college-graduate-level capability to do second-grade arithmetic is unimpeachable, at least as far as I, an ignominious dropout, can tell, nobody really needs a parliamentarian,  particularly one recruited from the world's premier Internet parliamentary forum,  and especially not one like Mr Martin, whose parliamentary consultative  talents are wasted on dividing eleven by 2wo and then adding one to the result, and concluding by figuring out whether 6.5 is at least 6 or not, to do that arithmetic.

 

The question is whether the organization really, really meant to literally establish, in its constitution, the voting threshold of "a 50% plus one majority",  which Mr Martin, being maybe or not a college graduate but almost certainly probably a second-grade graduate, at least here in Minnesota or Manitoba or Sheepshead Bay or whatever we call this Brooklyn place we live in, pointed out, is not just saying "a majority" (with requisite excessive officious verbiage) -- and really meaning an actual majority -- but actually, actually intended to make the threshold one vote higher. 

 

On one hand, as Robert's Rules points out in its Principles of Interpretation, beginning on p. 588 and extending maybe a whole w 3 1/2 pages and taking maybe five minutes to read, at least until you start to think about it, when it really starts to take longer except for college graduates who are trained to forget about it as soon as they read it, there is nothing at all to interpret when there is no ambiguity.   One might think that's what happens, like here, when the arithmetic is cut-and-dried, as it is. In which case, Mr Martin's impeccable (I think I called them unimpeachable" an hour ago (maybe four or five sentences or so back) -- the difference is nuance) figures for the higher threshold are what go.

 

On the other hand, if the organization, in using that wording, really just meant a majority vote, that's all, we're maybe sorry we're college graduates and can't divide by two and add one,  and will try to make it up in good works and college-graduate repentance  but in the meantime we really meant a majority vote, period -- and so, if it actually makes a difference some time and the uproar will be plain chaos -- then the assembly can decide that its numbers are ambiguous, and vote on what these numbers mean.

 

This is not RONR.  Or reality.  But you can't stop them.

 

(Edited to fix mismatched tenses and to close the parenthetical remark in the second paragraph, whose close-parentheses mark was inadvertently left off -- otherwise the whole post might be confusing.)

[Gary Novosielski]

If a constitution calls for a 50% plus one majority when voting, what is the number required when the number eligible to vote is an uneven number? In other words, if there are 11 eligible to vote, is 50% plus one equal to 6 or 7?

Unless the constitution says otherwise, the number eligible makes no difference.  The number who actually vote does.

 

If all 11 vote, then 50% of 11 is 5.5, plus one is 6.5   So to win, a vote would need at least 6.5 votes.  Thus, if it got 6 it would fail, and if it got 7 it would pass.  If it got exactly 6.5 I would be very surprised, but it would also pass.

 

If some other number of members voted, the math would be similar.