Private emails to a board member for voting

[Guest Debbie Johnson]

Is it proper practice for the President to privately email another board member to vote when there is not a majority vote?

[Hieu H. Huynh]

How is this vote being done? How do you know that there is not a majority vote?

[Guest]

We vote a lot through emails and include all board members. The vote is then ratified in the next board meeting. The vote was for a $7000 expenditure that 2 board members voted for and a third member voted to get bids. We have 5 board members and did not have the majority. The president sent a private email to another board member asking him to vote in favor of the expense and against the bidding process.

[Kim Goldsworthy]

50 minutes ago, Guest Debbie Johnson said:

Is it proper practice for the President to privately email another board member to vote when there is not a majority vote?

The act of sending emails (at any time, from anyone, to anyone) is not a parliamentary action.

So no rule from Robert's Rules of Order exists which allows, or prohibits, "private email".

***

Similarly:

Is it proper practice for a president to privately telephone another board member to vote? -- Same answer. It is private communication.

. . . to mail a letter to a board member . . .? Same answer. it is private communication.

 

[Kim Goldsworthy]

3 minutes ago, Guest said:

We vote a lot through emails.

The president sent a private email to another board member asking him to vote in favor of the expense and against the bidding process.

"Lobbying" and "caucusing" and "canvassing" are all allowed, since there is no prohibition within Robert's Rules of Order.

In political circles, the technical term is "G.O.T.V" -- Get Out The Vote.

Nothing wrong with "rallying the troops" and "knocking on doors", while the polls are still open.

Thus the advantage -- or disadvantage -- of voting via email.

[Guest]

Thank you for clarifying.

[Hieu H. Huynh]

38 minutes ago, Guest said:

We vote a lot through emails and include all board members. The vote is then ratified in the next board meeting. The vote was for a $7000 expenditure that 2 board members voted for and a third member voted to get bids. We have 5 board members and did not have the majority. The president sent a private email to another board member asking him to vote in favor of the expense and against the bidding process.

Is voting by email authorized in your bylaws? If not, the board is not obligated to ratify any votes by email.

[Richard Brown]

What is the point of ratifying a vote taken by email?   If you are going to buy something or make an expenditure based on the email vote, it is likely already done by the time you have an in person meeting and is too late to do anything about it.  If it won't be done until after the in person meeting, then why take an email vote in the first place?   What am I missing here?

[Gary Novosielski]

On 3/26/2016 at 4:31 PM, Guest said:

We vote a lot through emails and include all board members. The vote is then ratified in the next board meeting. The vote was for a $7000 expenditure that 2 board members voted for and a third member voted to get bids. We have 5 board members and did not have the majority. The president sent a private email to another board member asking him to vote in favor of the expense and against the bidding process.

RONR has rules against e-mail voting, unless you have provisions in your bylaws to allow it, which I presume you do not, or there would be no need to ratify the improper vote later.

If there were a rule against the president e-mailing board members, would there be any greater incentive to follow that rule than the one against e-mail voting?

In any case, there is no such rule.