Incorrect information in Motion

[Deb Parm]

We allow voting by email.  An email was sent with a motion to change the wording of in one small section of our Corporate Manual.  Discussions were held and voting has started.  The problem is the motion references the wrong section and page number we are trying to change.  The wording is correct otherwise.  The motion says Section 4, page 4.9 which was fine when the discussion started.  Unknown to us, the manual was updated in between and the change we need is now in Section 5, page 5.9.  

Does this nullify the vote and we have to start over?  Can I just inform the members of the correct section/page?

[Joshua Katz]

Well, this is the difficulty with email (or any form of asynchronous) voting. Do your rules make any provision for amending a motion? If not, you can try to freelance some form of amend, but the difficulty is that the rules usually provide that votes close in X days, causing the amendment to close after the motion itself. I once faced a similar situation (on a substantive matter, though) and my opinion was that the motion to amend should be treated as amend something previously adopted, even though it was moved before anything had been adopted. You can try that. Alternatively, you could just, if the motion passes, make a new motion to fix it. 

How was the manual updated? Who has the authority to do that, and can they fix this typographical issue?

I also tend to think that some form of unanimous consent might work here, depending on how many people are involved. But what you really need is to provide for such situations in the rules for email voting, for the future.

[Richard Brown]

As mr. Katz said, this is one of the problems with email voting or any type of absentee voting. Based on what we have been told, I think the two options are to either vote down the motion and then approve a new motion which is worded correctly or to approve the motion and then adopt a new one to correct it. I would suggest simply voting down the current motion and then starting over with one that is worded correctly.