Majority Vote By Mail

[Guest Jack]

When ballots are sent by mail to all members, what constitutes a majority ( a yes vote)?  For example, if you have 100 members and send them ballots by mail . Receive 40 back and 30 votes in favor of the question. Is this considered to be yes conformation of the question?

[jstackpo]

Since a "majority vote" is based on "those present and voting", and nobody is "present" in a mail vote, you will have to define "majority vote" for yourself in the section of the the bylaws that authorizes mail voting.

Commonly the members who return a ballot (possibly even a blank one) are considered "present" and the majority decision is based on the count of ballots containing a vote.

Whether "enough" ballots are returned -- a sort of pseudo-quorum -- is a separate question also to be specified in bylaws.

The same considerations apply to e-mail voting.

[Gary Novosielski]

19 hours ago, Guest Jack said:

When ballots are sent by mail to all members, what constitutes a majority ( a yes vote)?  For example, if you have 100 members and send them ballots by mail . Receive 40 back and 30 votes in favor of the question. Is this considered to be yes conformation of the question?

Since mail voting is prohibited unless the bylaws allow it is best for you to draft your own rules regarding this practice.  If the desire is to hew closely to the in-person procedures, a majority would be more than half of the votes cast, so 40-30 would certainly qualify, as would any count where there are more Yes votes than No votes.