Voting BEFORE the meeting

[Cruising]

Our organization's Bylaws allow for absentee ballots.  They also allow for nominations to the board of directors from the floor at the annual meeting.  This year votes can be cast a half hour before the meeting starts and during the meeting.  Is this legal?

 

[George Mervosh]

Our organization's Bylaws allow for absentee ballots.  They also allow for nominations to the board of directors from the floor at the annual meeting.  This year votes can be cast a half hour before the meeting starts and during the meeting.  Is this legal?

 

The assembly, by majority vote or unanimous consent, can set the time for the polls to be opened and closed.  If they've agreed to that, then it's proper.  Others might be by to discuss the procedure your group uses, which is far from ideal.

[mbillard]

Can you open voting for a particular position prior to closing nominations for that position? If they allow nominations from the floor during the meeting, how can they allow voting to begin prior to the meeting starting? 

[Edgar Guest]

Organizations that permit absentee voting typically do not permit nominations from the floor (and often not write-in votes either), The ballot is "fixed" before the voting starts.

[Bruce Lages]

Are you saying that members can cast ballots before nominations from the floor are opened?  It may be legal in a parliamentary sense, but it certainly sounds very unusual.

[jstackpo]

The really risky business is allowing both absentee (ahead of time voting) and in-house voting (after nominations are opened and closed at the meeting).   This is, obviously, because the absentee voters don't know about the (possible) nominations.

 

RONR doesn't condone this, but once your have set up rules that go beyond RONR (by setting up absentee voting) you are on your own.

[Richard Brown]

As the other posters have pointed out, allowing this type of voting is replete with problems and is one reason RONR does not condone it.

 

Since you have your own rule on this matter, it is up to your organization to interpret that rule.  We cannot do that for you.  As Dr. Stackpole said, "you are on your own".

[Gary Novosielski]

Which raises the question, do you really have a rule on this matter?  You said that "this year", votes can be case before the meeting starts.  Should we infer that in past years this was not the case?  What changed this year?  Who made the decision to open the polls before nominations were closed, and did that person or body have the authority to do so?

 

The answers are likely to be found in your bylaws, and not RONR.    But if you do not actually have such a rule, and the assembly itself did not set a time to open the polls before the meeting, I'd have some serious questions about what's going on.  I'd probably raise a point of order.

[Richard Brown]

I share Gary's concern in post # 8 above.  I picked up on the "This year votes can be cast a half hour before the meeting starts" in the original poster's question, but let it slide.  I'm glad Gary brought it up.  A little clarification on that point by the original poster would probably help us all to better understand what is going on.