Nominations/Elections

[Guest Matt Chris]

Our election of officer nominations have been completed. In according to our By-laws, nominations were done by the appropriated date.

 

A. The Nominating Committee shall present a slate of one or more candidates to each office at the March meeting of the Executive Council in an election year.

 

<>B.Additional nominations may be made at the March meeting either by members of the Executive Council or by presentation of a petition signed by ten percent of the membership.

 

We had two members nominated separately for the position of President. Both nominated and accepted within the appropriate time frame.

 

Now after all was said and done and all by-laws adheared to, the two people nominatied decided to join to run as co-presidents.

 

I guess I am asking is there anything wrong doing this? Does the nominations have to be re-opend? (some nominations were put on the slated due to the timeframe, the nominating committee implemented)

Should there be a revision in the By-laws to ad this?

 

I was told the following when I questioned this, "They are not adding additional nominations to the slate.  They are simply joining forces therefore making it an uncontested election.  They will just need approval from the rep council."

 

Any additional advise?

[Chris Harrison]

There are so many problems with having Co-Presidents that there isn't enough bandwidth to list them.  But the first question is if the bylaws even allow two people to share the office of President?  If they don't then you can't do it and if they try to insist they can ask them to show you a citation in the bylaws or RONR that supports their position.  If for whatever reason the bylaws do permit more than one person to serve as President I think (but stay tuned for other thoughts) the body which does the electing would still have the choice of whether to elect them both or just one of them.  When the election is pending debate is in order (RONR tinted pages 18-19 #49) and questions should be raised such as:

 

1) If both of them are at the meeting and they differ on their opinion of how to rule on something how do they resolve it?

2) If they abstain from voting except when their vote would affect the outcome of the vote and the situation rises when they would cast that "tie breaking" vote how would they resolve it if one wants to vote "yes" and the other wants to vote "no"?

3) What if one of them chooses to abstain unless their vote could affect the results and the other wants to vote with the rest and then the results could be affected by the 1st President's vote?  Would the 2nd President be out of luck since the President only gets one vote?

4) What if one of the Co-Presidents leaves office (be it by death, resignation, or removal) would the VP take over the Co-Presidency?

 

Just to name a few possible (and very likely) snafus that might come up.

[Rev Ed]

Also, you cannot have Co-anything unless the By-laws specifically allow for the position to be divided into two.

[Gary Novosielski]

Our election of officer nominations have been completed. In according to our By-laws, nominations were done by the appropriated date.

 

A. The Nominating Committee shall present a slate of one or more candidates to each office at the March meeting of the Executive Council in an election year.

 

<>B.Additional nominations may be made at the March meeting either by members of the Executive Council or by presentation of a petition signed by ten percent of the membership.

 

We had two members nominated separately for the position of President. Both nominated and accepted within the appropriate time frame.

 

Now after all was said and done and all by-laws adheared to, the two people nominatied decided to join to run as co-presidents.

 

I guess I am asking is there anything wrong doing this? Does the nominations have to be re-opend? (some nominations were put on the slated due to the timeframe, the nominating committee implemented)

Should there be a revision in the By-laws to ad this?

 

I was told the following when I questioned this, "They are not adding additional nominations to the slate.  They are simply joining forces therefore making it an uncontested election.  They will just need approval from the rep council."

 

Any additional advise?

 

The people nominated don't get to just "decide" to be co-presidents. 

 

Co-anythings, which (ask anyone here) are a terrible idea, are prohibited by RONR, unless this is explicitly authorized in your bylaws.

 

So these two nominees will have to run against each other.