amendment

[Guest Craig]

In the middle of voting on 2 amendments to a motion, another amendment(3rd) was offered. Assuming a second, Do we go on voting or stop and vote on the 3rd amendment??

[jstackpo]

You should have finished the voting process.  There should be no interruptions to voting - RONR, page 408.

[Hieu H. Huynh]

What was the motion and what were the amendments?

[Richard Brown]

Guest Craig, were you actually in the middle of a vote on one of the amendments or were you still discussing them? I question whether you were actually in the middle of a vote (taking the yeas and nays) on two amendments at the same time. Something about the facts as you presented them doesn't seem quite right. Can you elaborate? 

[Joshua Katz]

1 hour ago, Guest Craig said:

In the middle of voting on 2 amendments to a motion, another amendment(3rd) was offered. Assuming a second, Do we go on voting or stop and vote on the 3rd amendment??

Assuming the first two were handled correctly (that is, a primary and secondary amendment) the third should have been ruled out of order, whether you were voting or not, since you cannot go beyond 2 layers.  If two different amendments were being handled at the same time, that was already out of order.  In any event, as my colleagues mentioned, if you were voting, it was certainly out of order to make a new amendment, even if it otherwise would have been in order.  So, I think it's fair to conclude that, whatever the details, this action was out of order.  However, it is too late to raise a point of order.  

[Setemu]

I am assuming, as did Joshua Katz, that the primary and secondary amendments are being handled properly. If there is a secondary amendment pending to the main motion, and another member wishes to make it known they too want to make an amendment (thus of the third degree), that member may rise to state that if the pending secondary amendment fails, they will offer the one they wish to offer. However, that person cannot actually move the "amendment of the third degree" until the secondary amendment is dispensed of, because, as previously mentioned, "an amendment of the third degree is not permitted" (RONR Section 12, p. 135).

[Joshua Katz]

51 minutes ago, Setemu said:

If there is a secondary amendment pending to the main motion, and another member wishes to make it known they too want to make an amendment (thus of the third degree), that member may rise to state that if the pending secondary amendment fails, they will offer the one they wish to offer.

I agree, but will add that, if the assembly was voting, this would be out of order too.

[Guest Craig]

Thanks to all. Voting on line. My take away here finish the voting on  2 amendments and tell member who proposed 3rd it is out of order because can only have 2 amendments to mail motion?

[Richard Brown]

Guest Craig, in the future please post your follow up comments and questions on the same issue in the original thread rather than by starting a new thread. 

Since RONR prohibits online or email or absentee voting of any sort unless expressly authorized in your bylaws, you are really on your own here and your organization must figure this out for itself. It's your rule that authorizes this sort of voting. You have to interpret your own rules.  RONR would not allow this to happen.

But, if you are going to follow the rules in RONR to the greatest extent possible, I would take the position that a new amendment is out of order until at least one or, depending on the amendment, both amendments "on the floor" have been disposed of. 

I also have a problem with voting on two amendments at the same time. In RONR, amendments are taken up and voted on one at a time in the reverse order in which they were proposed. You would never be voting on two amendments at the same time.

Edited to add: here is a link to guest Craig's original thread:  http://robertsrules.forumflash.com/topic/31158-amendments/

Edited again to add: ignore my admonition to guest Craig to post his follow up comments in this original thread and also the the link above. The forum administrators apparently combined the two threads.

 

Edited December 21, 2017 at 02:47 PM by Richard Brown
Added last paragraph and struck out inapplicable parts of my original comment.

[Joshua Katz]

6 hours ago, Richard Brown said:

Edited to add: here is a link to guest Craig's original thread:  http://robertsrules.forumflash.com/topic/31158-amendments/

 

I don't understand.  The link just brought me back here.

[Richard Brown]

10 minutes ago, Joshua Katz said:

I don't understand.  The link just brought me back here.

It looks like the forum administrators combined the two threads by moving his new post to this thread.

[Dan Honemann]

4 hours ago, Richard Brown said:

It looks like the forum administrators combined the two threads by moving his new post to this thread.

Yep.

[SaintCad]

15 hours ago, Guest Craig said:

Thanks to all. Voting on line. My take away here finish the voting on  2 amendments and tell member who proposed 3rd it is out of order because can only have 2 amendments to mail motion?

Technically this is incorrect.  You cannot have 2 amendments to the main motion.  You may have have 1 amendment to the main motion and 1 (secondary) amendment to the amendment.

[Shmuel Gerber]

On 12/21/2017 at 4:03 PM, SaintCad said:

Technically this is incorrect.  You cannot have 2 amendments to the main motion.  You may have have 1 amendment to the main motion and 1 (secondary) amendment to the amendment.

There is no limit to the number of amendments that can be offered to a main motion, but in the ordinary deliberative process only one amendment of the same degree may be pending at any one time, and there cannot be more than two degrees of amendment.

[SaintCad]

That's what I meant.  SOrry for being confusing myself add in "before the assembly" to the end of my post.  Bottom line is that there cannot be 2 amendments of the first degree unresolved simultaneously.