E-mail voting

[Tomm]

First of all, there's nothing in our organizations Bylaws that allows for electronic meetings.

The Board did, however, vote by e-mail to cancel all Board and Committee meetings until June.

 I know RONR allows for electronic meetings if it is specifically specified in the Bylaws and meets all the requirements of a deliberative assembly.

My questions are:

1. Can a vote even be taken if electronic meetings aren't permitted in the Bylaws?

2. Even if electronic meeting were permitted would e-mail voting be permitted by RONR? 

3. If the Bylaws only specified that e-mail voting was permitted, (with no provisions to allow electronic meetings) would e-mail voting be permitted by RONR?

I ask this question because RONR seems to frown on the total concept of any voting by mail whether it's postal, e-mail, or  fax!  

I view this as a legislative body making a law that violates the Constitution. No law can violate the Constitution so can a Bylaw ever violate RONR and never be permitted?

[Atul Kapur]

Bylaws are superior to RONR. The standard language recommended by RONR states that it applies when it does not conflict with the bylaws and special rules of order, which also outrank it in the hierarchy of rules.

Now, if you put in place something that RONR doesn't advise, such as voting by email, then you are responsible for working out and, preferably, writing down every detail of how that works including all contingencies.

[Josh Martin]

36 minutes ago, Tomm said:

1. Can a vote even be taken if electronic meetings aren't permitted in the Bylaws?

A vote by email isn't a meeting, so the real question is whether email voting is permitted in the bylaws.

36 minutes ago, Tomm said:

2. Even if electronic meeting were permitted would e-mail voting be permitted by RONR?

No. Email voting is not a meeting. In any event, email voting is permitted only if the bylaws authorize email voting (and RONR recommends that an organization should not do so).

36 minutes ago, Tomm said:

3. If the Bylaws only specified that e-mail voting was permitted, (with no provisions to allow electronic meetings) would e-mail voting be permitted by RONR?

Yes. If the bylaws specify that email voting is permitted, then obviously email voting is permitted. The bylaws take precedence over RONR.

I would note that if all the bylaws (and the society's other rules) specify is that email voting is permitted, the society is probably going to have a lot of problems figuring out how email voting works, but that doesn't change the fact that if the bylaws say email voting is permitted, that takes precedence over anything RONR has to say on the matter.

36 minutes ago, Tomm said:

I view this as a legislative body making a law that violates the Constitution. No law can violate the Constitution so can a Bylaw ever violate RONR and never be permitted?

I understand what you are saying, but you have the relationship of the rules backwards. The bylaws take precedence over RONR.

"Within this framework under the general parliamentary law, an assembly or society is free to adopt any rules it may wish (even rules deviating from parliamentary law) provided that, in the procedure of adopting them, it conforms to parliamentary law or its own existing rules. The only limitations upon the rules that such a body can thus adopt might arise from the rules of a parent body (as those of a national society restricting its state or local branches), or from national, state, or local law affecting the particular type of organization." (RONR, 11th ed., pg. 11)

"When a society or an assembly has adopted a particular parliamentary manual—such as this book—as its authority, the rules contained in that manual are binding upon it in all cases where they are not inconsistent with the bylaws (or constitution) of the body, any of its special rules of order, or any provisions of local, state, or national law applying to the particular type of organization." (RONR, 11th ed., pg. 16)

Edited May 4, 2020 at 05:21 PM by Josh Martin