Dividing a motion to substitute

[mjhmjh]

In a special committee, the pending main motion is a draft constitutional revision. We are considering an amendment to the revision that a subcommittee recommended. The amendment substitutes an article in the draft for a re-written article. The new article includes three sections.

A member was interested in moving to divide the question—that is, make section 1 a separate amendment from sections 2 and 3. Is this allowed? I do not see how a motion to substitute can be divided. 

[Shmuel Gerber]

See if RONR (11th ed.), p. 274, ll.20–29 answers your question.

[mjhmjh]

20 minutes ago, Shmuel Gerber said:

See if RONR (11th ed.), p. 274, ll.20–29 answers your question.

I'm not really sure how to apply those lines to my situation. The amendment isn't a series of resolutions, it just substitutes one article for another. Are you saying that the substitution is indivisible and that the member will have to move to strike section 1 from the substitution if he wants to consider it separately?

[Shmuel Gerber]

It depends on whether the sections parallel each other and could be taken just as well from the revision as from the substitute.

Would the article as a whole make sense if only section 1 were substituted for section 1, and if only the other sections were substituted for the other sections?

If the answers are "yes" and "yes", then the motion to substitute can be divided.

Otherwise, the desired result will have to be achieved by some form of secondary amendment.