immediately pending motion

[Leo]

A resolution containing three resolves is pending.

The second resolve is to donate $100 to a certain charity.

It is moved, seconded, and adopted to strike $100 and insert a blank.

Members call out $200, $250, and $300.

The chair takes the votes on the $100, $200, $250, and $300.

No amount receives a majority vote.

What is the immediately pending motion?

or

At this time, what motion does the chair state?

[Kim Goldsworthy]

>> No amount receives a majority vote.

This is interesting.

I have never run across a parliamentary drill, exercise, or scenario, in any lecture or workshop, which covers such a hypothetical.

***

To play it safe, I would say this.

   • The immediately pending question is "the filling of the blank".

***

>> What motion does the chair state?

Well, we know the proposed amounts failed to garner a majority vote.

So, there is a choice to be made:

   (a.) re-try to fill the blank. (Good luck with that!)

   (b.) work on the rest of the resolution (one of the three "resolved" clauses); and come back later to the problem resolved clause.

***

In theory, we cold make an analogy with the motion "Refer to Committee".

In "Commit/Refer", the chair, believe it or not, is allowed to put the question with blanks still left unfilled.

  • If the motion To Commit fails, the blanks make no difference.

  • If the motion To Commit is adopted, then the parliamentary rule is, you then concentrate on filling the blanks.

Again, that  is an analogy.

I am not necessarily committing myself to that mode as the most proper solution to the problem.

[Leo]

I like the idea that the blank is in the resolve since it was adopted to insert the blank.

If the chair continues along that line and the resolution is adopted with a blank it would be an incomplete motion.

Then, as with the motion to commit, no other business can be conducted until the details are resolved or in this case until the blank is filled.

 

[Dan Honemann]

7 hours ago, Leo said:

 

A resolution containing three resolves is pending.

 

The second resolve is to donate $100 to a certain charity.

 

It is moved, seconded, and adopted to strike $100 and insert a blank.

 

Members call out $200, $250, and $300.

 

The chair takes the votes on the $100, $200, $250, and $300.

 

No amount receives a majority vote.

 

What is the immediately pending motion?

 

or

 

At this time, what motion does the chair state?

 

 

If none of the suggestions obtains a majority vote, the chair should open the floor to further suggestions.

As noted on page 167, lines 15ff, if members feel that the reason why no suggestion can be agreed upon is because members are opposed to the pending main motion, they may succeed in ordering the Previous Question on all pending questions before the blank is filled. If the motion containing the blank happens to be adopted, however, the blank will have to be filled and the motion disposed of before any new subject (except a privileged one) is introduced.

The assembly may agree to vote on suggestions by ballot, in which event balloting continues until one of the suggestions receives a majority vote.

You may be trying to raise some additional issue by referring to a "resolution containing three resolves". I don't know if, by this, you mean a resolution containing three resolving clauses or a series of three resolutions offered by a single main motion, as described on page 110, but in either case, perhaps you could be more specific as to what it is that is concerning you in this regard.

[Leo]

The idea was that the three resolves would be equivalent to an annual budget with a series of line items. And, the members for whatever reason could not agree on what to put in a particular blank they had created.

[Dan Honemann]

4 minutes ago, Leo said:

The idea was that the three resolves would be equivalent to an annual budget with a series of line items. And, the members for whatever reason could not agree on what to put in a particular blank they had created.

Well, I may be a little dense, but I'm still not at all sure what is meant by "three resolves" which "would be equivalent to an annual budget with a series of line items."

In any event, after the assembly failed to fill the blank with one of the four suggestions, the resolution which included these "three resolves", is the resolution which remains pending, and this resolution contains a blank which remains to be filled.

[Joshua Katz]

It could be an error in the description, but it appears to me that, if things are exactly as described, the chair erred in the way the question was put.  The $300 should be considered first, and then in decreasing order.