Accidental Vote?

[Guest David Galindo]

A motion was made to appoint an elected county official for an unexpired term with someone seconding the motion. However the Chairperson and the other two residing official chose to obstain from the vote so as to have more time to study and discuss the matter with the intent to vote on it 72 hours later with 2 in favor and 3 obstained.

 

The residing attorney has ruled that the vote has been made and the appointment stands in favor of the officials who voted "ya". Is this correct? Has the appointed been legally met or does the recommendation by the chair to wait the 72 hours with the other two in agreement hold legal grounds?

[Timothy]

As far as RONR is concerned, I would agree with the attorney, since it doesn't appear there was a motion to postpone. There might be legal issues involved, but for that I would point you to an attorney. It seems you already have the opinion of an attorney.

[Rev Ed]

I am confused by the following statement: "the intent to vote on it 72 hours later with 2 in favor and 3 obstained."  The two votes, were they in favour of approving the appointment, or in favour of postponing the appointment for three days? 

 

Abstaining means that you are not voting, so the three who abstained did not actually vote, and thus do not have a barring on the the outcome of the vote.

 

If no one made a motion to postpone the appointment, then the attorney is correct.  If the three members wanted to postpone the vote then one of them should have moved to postpone the appointment three days, with another one seconding the motion to postpone.  By abstaining, they would simply have allowed the other two members to make a decision (which is what I think happened, but the statement I referenced above makes this confusing.)

[Gary c Tesser]

... If the three members wanted to postpone the vote then one of them should have moved to postpone the appointment three days, with another one seconding the motion to postpone. ...

Not bad by Mr Ed here, but with three or four people in the room, probably seconding motions wasn't required.

(Watch out for that one, Ed. It still catches me sometimes.)

[Timothy]

Not bad by Mr Ed here, but with three or four people in the room, probably seconding motions wasn't required.

 

Even if we allow for a very informal motion to postpone by one of the people who abstained stating he wanted to wait, it doesn't appear that the motion to postpone was voted on and no point of order was raised, so the vote of the two is all that matters.

[Guest David Galindo]

The two were in favour of the appointment and the three wanted to wait the 72 hours. Once again our county officials have displayed a poor knowledge and understanding of the position they hold and how to officially respond to the matter at hand. The two voted "yea" while the other three chose to abstain without any knowledge of what the outcome would be or even the knowledge that it could have been postponed or tabled before the vote. Thank you gentlemen for your responses. 

[Gary Novosielski]

A motion was made to appoint an elected county official for an unexpired term with someone seconding the motion. However the Chairperson and the other two residing official chose to obstain from the vote so as to have more time to study and discuss the matter with the intent to vote on it 72 hours later with 2 in favor and 3 obstained.

 

The residing attorney has ruled that the vote has been made and the appointment stands in favor of the officials who voted "ya". Is this correct? Has the appointed been legally met or does the recommendation by the chair to wait the 72 hours with the other two in agreement hold legal grounds?

If the chair and other members wanted to postpone the motion for 72 hours, then should have moved to postpone the motion for 72 hours.  They apparently had the votes necessary to win that motion.

 

Inexplicably, they did not do so and instead merely abstained.  The vote was 2-0 in favor of the motion to appoint.   The motion was adopted, and that would appear to be the end of it.

 

The fact that they may have had no knowledge that they could have moved to postpone may be embarrassing to them, especially the chair, but is essentially irrelevant.  Maybe if they are embarrassed a few more times it will be enough to convince them of the wisdom of taking a half hour to read a few chapters in Roberts Rules of Order Newly Revised in Brief, which would have given them more than enough information to avoid looking foolish. 

[Guest David Galindo]

Exactly my point, they do not take the time to research anything even if they do not understand or agree with the matter at hand. Instead they tend to go with the flow, bussiness as usual, regardless of the outcome.