Vote counting at a board Meeting

[Guest Tony]

In a board meeting vote, if all votes are “yes” except for one abstention, is the vote still consider a unanimous vote?

[Rev Ed]

2 minutes ago, Guest Tony said:

In a board meeting vote, if all votes are “yes” except for one abstention, is the vote still consider a unanimous vote?

Yes, an abstention is not a vote, so if there are not any 'no' votes then it is a unanimous vote - even there is only one vote and 99 abstentions. 

[Weldon Merritt]

1 hour ago, Rev Ed said:

Yes, an abstention is not a vote, so if there are not any 'no' votes then it is a unanimous vote - even there is only one vote and 99 abstentions. 

I concur, but also point out that a unanimous vote has no special significance so far as RONR is concerned, and generally there is no need to record the fact that the vote was unanimous. The exception would be if your governing rules require a unanimous vote for some actions.

[Gary Novosielski]

On 6/9/2020 at 8:05 PM, Weldon Merritt said:

I concur, but also point out that a unanimous vote has no special significance so far as RONR is concerned, and generally there is no need to record the fact that the vote was unanimous. The exception would be if your governing rules require a unanimous vote for some actions.

Now that you mention it, there are certain actions that are clearly prohibited in RONR, "even by a unanimous vote," which suggests that RONR recognizes a unanimous vote as somehow specially significant.  Yet there are no motions that come to mind which may be adopted only* by  a unanimous vote, so the special significance does seem somewhat insubstantial.

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* Not to be confused with unanimous consent for a motion that may also be adopted by some lesser threshold.

Edited June 12, 2020 at 10:11 PM by Gary Novosielski