How firm is the agenda

[Guest sue]

Annual Membership meeting: The election was not put on the agenda mailed out to the members. However, the ballots went out on time and instruction were to either mail in the ballot or vote at the meeting.

I say the counting of the ballots could be added to the agenda when the chair asks for additions or corrections to the agenda OR that the bylaws say the election is held at the annual meeting. f th

Will either these suffice with such an important issue as Board elections?

  

 

 

[Dan Honemann]

2 minutes ago, Guest sue said:

Annual Membership meeting: The election was not put on the agenda mailed out to the members. However, the ballots went out on time and instruction were to either mail in the ballot or vote at the meeting.

I say the counting of the ballots could be added to the agenda when the chair asks for additions or corrections to the agenda OR that the bylaws say the election is held at the annual meeting. f th

Will either these suffice with such an important issue as Board elections?

  

 

 

First of all, look at what is said in the first paragraph of the answer to Q&A 14, which you can find here.

Secondly, you might want to note what RONR says on page 423"

"An organization should never adopt a bylaw permitting a question to be decided by a voting procedure in which the votes of persons who attend a meeting are counted together with ballots mailed in by absentees. The votes of those present could be affected by debate, by amendments, and perhaps by the need for repeated balloting, while those absent would be unable to adjust their votes to reflect these factors. Consequently, the absentee ballots would in most cases be on a somewhat different question than that on which those present were voting, leading to confusion, unfairness, and inaccuracy in determining the result."

[Gary Novosielski]

1 hour ago, Guest sue said:

Annual Membership meeting: The election was not put on the agenda mailed out to the members. However, the ballots went out on time and instruction were to either mail in the ballot or vote at the meeting.

I say the counting of the ballots could be added to the agenda when the chair asks for additions or corrections to the agenda OR that the bylaws say the election is held at the annual meeting. f th

Will either these suffice with such an important issue as Board elections?

If the election of officers at the annual meeting is provided for in the bylaws, that is sufficient notice.  An election can be assumed to include the report of the nominating committee if any, nominations from the floor, balloting, counting, and reporting results, possibly repeating the last three or four steps as needed.  There's no need to break down every step on the agenda.

As Mr. H. noted, combining absentee votes with in-person votes amounts to  courting heartache.  It would have been better to have either no one vote absentee, or have everyone vote absentee.  I favor the former, since repeated balloting may be required.  Since instructions were already given, it may be too late to fix this time around.

[J. J.]

There is a way of doing it, but it in difficult to draft a bylaw permitting it, harder to carry out, and very time consuming.

The process is and would have to be authorized in the bylaws:

1.  Chair puts the question on the main motion to be decided.  This is after debate and any subsidiary motions have been processed.

2.  The members at the meeting cast ballots

3.  The meeting adjourns.  It either adjourns to the next regular meeting (if that will be within the quarterly time interval), or to an adjourned meeting

4.  The ballots are mailed out to all members that have not already voted.  They are instruction to return them by a certain date. 

5.  A committee of tellers receives the ballots and counts them.

6.  At the next meeting, the tellers report and the chair announces the result.

It is possibly, but it is not easy.

In the case of an election, the nominations would have had to have been closed before anything has been sent.

Because of some problems implementing this, I would suggest making it a straight forward absentee ballot.