Eligibility for Office Bylaw

[Jenn]

  A bylaw states a member must attend 9 of 12 meetings to be eligible for an elected office.  The unit only had 11 meetings prior to the election.  At this juncture, is the bylaw enforceable  because the 12 meetings did not occur?  If a member has attended 8, could they argue that the meeting canceled impacted their eligibility?

[Richard Brown]

15 minutes ago, Jenn said:

  A bylaw states a member must attend 9 of 12 meetings to be eligible for an elected office.  The unit only had 11 meetings prior to the election.  At this juncture, is the bylaw enforceable  because the 12 meetings did not occur?  If a member has attended 8, could they argue that the meeting canceled impacted their eligibility?

This is a matter of bylaws interpretation, which we cannot do for you.  Each organization must interpret its own bylaws.  Keep checking back, though, as someone might have some useful advice on this situation.

btw, a bylaw interpretation on something like this is usually done by way of a member raising a point of order that, in your case, that a member who attended only eight meetings is not eligible for elected office.  The chair rules whether the point of order is well taken.  The ruling of the chair can be appealed to the assembly, which has the final word.  It takes a majority vote to overrule the decision of the chair.  That is how you get a resolution  on those types of issues.... but you should then amend the bylaws so that the issue is clear for the future.

[Gary Novosielski]

I agree that your organization must ultimately decide what its bylaws mean.

But seeing only a paraphrase of the bylaws rather than an actual quote would make it difficult for anyone here to even offer advice on interpretation.

[Transpower]

Perhaps the election meeting would count as the 12th meeting, so then if the member had attended 8 of the last 11 meetings and attends the election meeting, then that should, I think, count as complying with the bylaws.

Edited April 14, 2019 at 10:38 PM by Transpower