Membership body makes motion and votes 2/3 to change a process of executive board on endorsement of political candidates

[Guest David Shallcross]

  Add a general meeting emotion is made to override the policy and procedure at the executive board as established for screening and possible endorsement of outside political candidates the member stacked the votes of the general meeting with supporters of a political candidate who is also a member of the organization and voted for his endorsement without the screening procedure of the board has put in place is this appropriate how do we counter act? 

[Richard Brown]

It's a little difficult to follow exactly what happened, but as a general rule, unless your bylaws provide otherwise, the membership may reverse a decision of a subordinate body such as the board of directors, executive board, or executive committee. With notice, such an action can be reversed with a majority vote. Without notice, it requires a two-thirds vote or the vote of a majority of the entire membership. It sounds like it got the two-thirds vote.

Question: do your bylaws provide that the executive board has the exclusive authority to establish those procedures? Granting them the authority to do something is not the same thing as granting them the exclusive authority.

Edited to add: See official interpretations 2006-12 and 2006-13.  http://www.robertsrules.com/interp_list.html#2006_13

Edited January 13, 2019 at 01:47 AM by Richard Brown
Added last paragraph

[jstackpo]

A few specifics...

29 minutes ago, Guest David Shallcross said:

override the policy and procedure at the executive board

Unless your bylaws give the board exclusive control over such matters, a board is properly subservient to the wishes of the general membership, as expressed in adopted motions. So no parliamentary problem there.

32 minutes ago, Guest David Shallcross said:

stacked the votes of the general meeting with supporters

That is more politely known as "getting out the vote", presuming all those supporters were members of the association.

34 minutes ago, Guest David Shallcross said:

without the screening procedure of the board

I presume those screening procedures were what was overridden in the first vote you spoke of so they are within their rights

You don't like what happened?  Next meeting get your voters out  in sufficient number to rescind the endorsement and reset the screening system to something more to your liking.  This is all just democracy in action, hardball democracy to be sure, but it matches the temper of the times.