Can a special rule of order allow "queuing" speakers? If so, how would I word it?

[Benjamin Geiger]

When several members wish to speak to a motion, our Chair has a habit of acknowledging multiple members in sequence: "Okay, Alice, then Bob, then Carol."

Any victory I'd have in convincing them to follow proper floor assignment procedure would be Pyrrhic at best. Since the status quo seems to be acceptable to most--if not all--of the membership (in truth, the only objection I have is "it's not RONR"), and in the spirit of "pick your battles" (or perhaps "if the mountain won't come to Muhammad"), I'm considering proposing a special rule of order such that the Chair's current practice becomes the "proper" practice.

Is this something that can be done without rewriting swaths of RONR? Or should I just continue letting them follow custom, despite...?

[Guest Zev]

I can think of several reasons why this non-standard floor assignment procedure is harmful and strongly urge you not to adopt any special rule of order that would solidify its practice.

[Richard Brown]

I'm not going to be nearly as critical of the practice as guest Zev was, especially not without knowing more. There might well be some very good reasons for what the chair is doing.

For example, just yesterday I was watching a live feed of a meeting of a 17-member national board of directors being chaired by one of the most skilled presiding officers I have had the pleasure of watching and working with.

Although it was hard to tell from the video feed what the chair was able to observe from his vantage point, it appeared to me then and has appeared to me on at least one other occasion when I watched one of these meetings that once a motion is introduced, several board members might raise their hands seeking recognition. At some point, usually after the first speaker, this chairman will sometimes announce the names and speaking order of the next few members he intends to recognize. I don't know if he is basing this on the order in which he sees them raise their hands, or randomly, or because he already knows in advance who is going to speak in favor of and against the motion and he intends to call on those who are pro and con in alternating order as suggested by RONR.

However, whatever his reasoning or methodology, it seems to work extremely well and without any complaints from the members. He does not always announce their names in advance, and in fact he usually does not, but when he does do it it seems to work well.

There are at least a couple of other members of this forum who are familiar with the organization  I am referring to and its chairman. One is a current member and one is a past member of this board . Perhaps one of them can provide a little more insight into this presiding officer's methodology and how well it works.

Although I question the need for it, I think a special rule of "codifying" the practice could be drafted if that is truly what the assembly wants to do. It would be helpful if you can provide a little more information as to how you think the chair is determining this particular speaking order.

[Transpower]

The best approach is to alternate pro and con speakers on the motion under discussion.

[jstackpo]

2 minutes ago, Transpower said:

The best approach is to alternate pro and con speakers on the motion under discussion.

And in a large organization meeting (100+attendees) this can be neatly implemented by setting up two microphone stands, "Pro" and "Con", for members to cue up at, plus allowing someone to jump to the head of the line if he/she has a "parliamentary step" that can legitimately interrupt (Tinted page 40) what is going on.

[Joshua Katz]

39 minutes ago, Richard Brown said:

There are at least a couple of other members of this forum who are familiar with the organization  I am referring to and its chairman. One is a current member and one is a past member of this board . Perhaps one of them can provide a little more insight into this presiding officer's methodology and how well it works.

 

It works well for a group that size. I agree with the others that it would not work well for a larger group. In response to Mr. Transpower, in a group of 17, it is fairly predictable on which side members will speak, and the officer Mr. Brown is referencing lists them in alternating order when possible. I like this approach in a small group, even if it is not technically RONR compliant. It achieves everything RONR wants to achieve, without there being a race to be recognized after every speaker. In turn, that lets members actually pay attention to the speaker, instead of fixating on how to get recognized next.

Where it fails is when there are multiple amendments. I've been called upon, for instance, to speak on an amendment, because I was listed for the main motion, but had nothing to say about the amendment. This produced at least once a negative outcome: a motion was made, and immediately an amendment was moved. Even though I was listed before the amendment was made, when the chair got to me, I declined, since I had no opinion on the amendment. Time then expired, and the assembly declined motions to extend time, even though no one had spoken in the negative. I believe that part of the reluctance to extend time on my motion arose from my having turned down the floor, despite the fact that I hadn't sought it for the amendment. So I think it is necessary to maintain separate lists once an amendment is made, and know where you are on the main list in order to return to it without calling on people for the amendment who haven't sought to speak on it. When I chaired a committee that frequently met online, I did it that way, and it worked well.

 

[Guest Who's Coming to Dinner]

6 hours ago, Benjamin Geiger said:

Any victory I'd have in convincing them to follow proper floor assignment procedure would be Pyrrhic at best. Since the status quo seems to be acceptable to most--if not all--of the membership (in truth, the only objection I have is "it's not RONR"), and in the spirit of "pick your battles" (or perhaps "if the mountain won't come to Muhammad"), I'm considering proposing a special rule of order such that the Chair's current practice becomes the "proper" practice.

If your best argument is that it's not proper, how are you going to convince the members to adopt a rule that they are content to operate without? Unless there is some real deficiency, such as the chair letting all the supporting voices go first without alternation, I think you are tilting at a windmill.

[Gary Novosielski]

9 hours ago, Benjamin Geiger said:

When several members wish to speak to a motion, our Chair has a habit of acknowledging multiple members in sequence: "Okay, Alice, then Bob, then Carol."

Any victory I'd have in convincing them to follow proper floor assignment procedure would be Pyrrhic at best. Since the status quo seems to be acceptable to most--if not all--of the membership (in truth, the only objection I have is "it's not RONR"), and in the spirit of "pick your battles" (or perhaps "if the mountain won't come to Muhammad"), I'm considering proposing a special rule of order such that the Chair's current practice becomes the "proper" practice.

Is this something that can be done without rewriting swaths of RONR? Or should I just continue letting them follow custom, despite...?

Considering that the present custom is something relatively inadvisable, I see no benefit to enshrining it in a written rule..  Let it remain nothing more than a custom.  What you don't want is for a future chairman, one more likely to follow good procedure, to be locked into the poor procedure for no other reason than that someone else did it that way.

[Joshua Katz]

13 hours ago, Benjamin Geiger said:

Since the status quo seems to be acceptable to most--if not all--of the membership (in truth, the only objection I have is "it's not RONR"), and in the spirit of "pick your battles" (or perhaps "if the mountain won't come to Muhammad"), I'm considering proposing a special rule of order such that the Chair's current practice becomes the "proper" practice.

Why not just shrug and figure it's been accepted by unanimous consent? 

Put it this way: if you walk into a room and everyone is grabbing live chickens and stuffing them into their mouths, and you are supposed to teach them table manners, don't start with the spoon that sits parallel to the table edge on the far side of the plate being for dessert. But also don't change table manners so that eating live chickens is fine. Just start with something that's dysfunctional.

I'm not convinced this way of doing things is dysfunctional, but in any event, keep in mind that a meeting is not a lesson in parliamentary procedure, and RONR should not be used as a pointless formality. If you think rights are being trampled, say that. But it seems you don't, since you want a rule to this effect. To what end? Just so you can say you're in compliance? I'd suggest finding something that isn't working, and showing how RONR can make that better, first.

[Benjamin Geiger]

17 minutes ago, Joshua Katz said:

Why not just shrug and figure it's been accepted by unanimous consent? 

That's... a really good point.

18 minutes ago, Joshua Katz said:

To what end? Just so you can say you're in compliance?

Pretty much, yeah. I realized I'm falling into the trap of "because General Robert said so", and I need to work harder to avoid it.

[Joshua Katz]

1 minute ago, Benjamin Geiger said:

Pretty much, yeah. I realized I'm falling into the trap of "because General Robert said so", and I need to work harder to avoid it.

I would suggest, given your context, ordering one of those writing on glass placards, and having it engraved with "The rules of order are to protect rights and facilitate business." Or at least write a notecard. When you know how it should be done, it is easy to try to correct everything at once.

If you want another metaphor, I was the weightlifting coach when I taught high school. (Those who know me will be surprised by this, but it was a very different stage of life.) Most of the time, students did not have well-defined goals, but some actually wanted to learn weightlifting - that is, the clean and jerk and the snatch. These are complex, difficult lifts, and when a student is trying them, there's an understandable instinct to work on the double knee bend, the hip movement, the elbow speed, the wrist movement, the jump, the landing, etc. etc. But if I lecture a student for 10 minutes above everything wrong with the snatch they just attempted, the next attempt will be no better. If, instead, I work on the hip hinge, the next effort might have a decent hip hinge. (Of course, that's because I already taught them the hip hinge, by working with KBs and medicine balls for a few weeks before their first attempt at a clean.)

[Guest Zev]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Geiger said:

I realized I'm falling into the trap of "because General Robert said so", and I need to work harder to avoid it.

There is no trap to fall into because General Robert actually did not say so. There had been almost ninety years experience in the US Congress and several hundred in the British Parliament regarding recognition and floor assignment. Experience has taught us that what this book suggests is the best practice for assemblies of almost any size. I do admit that large conventions have special needs and something needs to be done to accommodate them. The one curious thing about this discussion is that the gentleman OP has not indicated whether his organization has adopted RONR as its parliamentary authority or not. If not, then I can understand the assembly's behavior, otherwise I have a question to the presiding officer of why is he/she deviating from the rules of floor assignment?

[Joshua Katz]

I might say the opposite, though. In a large assembly, I think we should do what we can to implement RONR's guidance on floor assignment (which, after all, is where we learned it - the Congress and the Parliament). Sure, there are challenges - it's not easy to see who stood up first when we have a thousand people, but we do the best we can. I think the colored cards system is useful, as is having multiple microphones.

But now go to a 20 person meeting. Do the rules still make sense? We're not going to stand for recognition, we're going to raise hands, and does it really make sense to determine the next speaker by whose hand goes up first? Okay, yes, I can make an argument - it keeps discussion better focused, because it means the next speaker is more likely to be responding to the previous speaker, whereas with a list, it's just someone who wanted to speak from the beginning. But people who aren't directly responding can shoot their hands up, too - and, in my experience, even if a person wanted to speak from the start, he will adapt his comments to what has gone before, and if his point has been made already, he'll often (but by no means always) just take a pass. So I'm unclear, in a small body, what is wrong with the system OP describes?

But, then again, OP isn't seeking to change it (and seemingly doesn't see anything wrong with it, either). All he's seeking to do is make it a rule. That's where I think the "trap" idea makes more sense - if adopting a rule won't change anything, except to lock in a system you think is inferior to the default alternative, why adopt one?

[Benjamin Geiger]

1 hour ago, Guest Zev said:

The one curious thing about this discussion is that the gentleman OP has not indicated whether his organization has adopted RONR as its parliamentary authority or not.

Yes, RONR is our parliamentary authority.

1 hour ago, Guest Zev said:

otherwise I have a question to the presiding officer of why is he/she deviating from the rules of floor assignment?

I think it's more a matter of rules drift. People don't bother reading RONR; they learn how to run meetings from someone who learned to run meetings from someone who learned to run meetings from someone who half-remembered skimming RONR once. It turns into a giant game of telephone, combined with a "let's play it by ear" attitude.

Also, our debates tend to be more 'conversational', more like committee meetings; instead of members standing and delivering speeches, we tend to say a couple of sentences when we get the floor, and often directly to another member (another debate rule we routinely break).

1 hour ago, Joshua Katz said:

But, then again, OP isn't seeking to change it (and seemingly doesn't see anything wrong with it, either). All he's seeking to do is make it a rule

I prefer the more formal approach, myself, but that's because I'm used to it. I can accept the status quo, though, particularly since it seems to be more natural for our organization. I don't think they're ready for proper debate yet. Baby steps.

[Joshua Katz]

Fair enough. I don't think adopting a special rule endorsing a method you don't like, which also is not what RONR calls for, is a good baby step, though. A better baby step, in my opinion, is ignoring this particular issue for now. (Of course, if the method were called for in RONR, then adopting a special rule of order would also be a bad idea.)