Nominating Committee error

[Guest Puzzled]

Hi.  Our club has elections coming up at our next meeting.  The nominating committee's report was just emailed out to the members, but seems to me they must have screwed up royally.  At least one person who I know was nominated for president does not appear on the list and has told me she doesn't know why she isn't.  At least one other person who is on the list, says she was never asked if she was going to run again for this office.  There are probably other errors I'm not necessarily privy to.  I'm not on the board or anything, just a general member, but I can't let this slide by.  The current president has no grasp of parliamentary procedure and has said he didn't want to run again yet his name is on the report as the sole nominee for president.  It's not a mistake, this is the report the president forwarded to the webmaster for distribution to the membership.  I'm not finding anything in our bylaws or Robert's Rules about what to do when the nominating committee screws up like this. What to do in this situation?  I can't feel any confidence that the current president knows to call for nominations from the floor.  Do I try to move that the election be postponed until the error can be fixed?  Do I try to force the president to call for nominations from the floor? that's all I've been able to come up with.  It's a mess and no one wants to create a stink but this is too much to let slide.  Thanks for any suggestions.

[Guest Who's Coming to Dinner]

Why don't you contact the nominating committee chair and politely ask what the heck is going on?

[Josh Martin]

8 minutes ago, Guest Puzzled said:

Do I try to force the president to call for nominations from the floor?

Yes. Raise a Point of Order, followed by an Appeal if necessary.

 

[Richard Brown]

And have other members, or at least one other member, lined up to support you and to make nominations.

[Bruce Lages]

While I agree that there seems to be substantial questions about this nominating committee's report, I would just point out that RONR does not require a nominee's consent for the nomination to be valid. In the case of your reluctant president, if the nominating committee sincerely believed he was the best candidate for the office (despite his stated reluctance), they would be within their rights to list him as the committee's nominee. They would also be able to reconvene, if possible, and select another nominee. Whether a candidate wants to accept an office or not gets sorted out after he or she wins the election according to RONR - if at the time the election results are announced an elected person declines to serve, another round of balloting is held for that office.

[Gary c Tesser]

"Puzzled", if you haven't already, you (or one of your allies, to whom Mr Brown alludes, that irrepressible, indefatigable college graduate) should posthaste determine whatever your bylaws (or other rules) prescribe about nominations and elections.  RONR gives a few options, but specifically says that the nominating committee's report, regardless of whether it has been previously distributed (which RONR says is a good idea) or not, "should always be presented at a formal meeting", and that "after teh nominating committee has presented its report ... the chair MUST [my emphasis -- GcT*] call for further nominations from the floor" (RONR, 11th Ed, p. 434 & -5).  Mr or Ms Puzzled, it's right there, on those pages in black and white.  And maybe, diplomatically,  instead of raising a point of order when the rules are violated (which, in a sense, essentially accuses the presiding officer of doing it wrong) you pull him aside earlier -- some time before the meeting -- and tell him the easy and fair (and, oh, official) way to get the job done.

__________

*Suddenly I don't see the icons for italics and boldface, so my apologies for the all-caps

 

[J. J.]

On 12/18/2017 at 10:25 AM, Gary c Tesser said:

"

 

*Suddenly I don't see the icons for italics and boldface, so my apologies for the all-caps

 

They should be at the top of the message box

[Guest Puzzled]

thanks all.  Our bylaws do specify that candidates be willing, and says nothing about presenting a slate of candidates.  Just says they'll select candidates.  So we've got candidates on the slate who are not willing to serve as part of that slate.  But, at our meeting, the membership first thing voted to postpone the election (wasn't even me that moved it) because we were just a few miles down the road from where the interstate was closed by the Amtrak derailment, so - only about half the people we normally get were there, and no one from the nominating committee was there, and the current president was not there.  No one wanted to take a 2 hour detour to get to a meeting - go figure!  Without the nominating committee there to explain themselves, and the current prez unable to tell us that he's changed his mind and is willing after all, and no idea if there were other nominees (ok some of us knew that there had been other nominees but not everyone knew that), no one wanted to vote.   So, crisis averted for now.