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Guest Rose McDermott

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Guest Rose McDermott

Can a national president instruct the national secretary to edit the minutes of a meeting because they some of the attendees objected to the information while other attendees accepted them. Should this not be put to a vote of the delegates?

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1 hour ago, Guest Rose McDermott said:

Can a national president instruct the national secretary to edit the minutes of a meeting because they some of the attendees objected to the information while other attendees accepted them. Should this not be put to a vote of the delegates?

If the rules in RONR apply, a president has no such authority.  Corrections to minutes are handled during Reading and Approval of Minutes, and if there is disagreement about a correction, it is handled like an ordinary amendment, and ultimately voted on by the members.

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What should happen, at most conventions, is that a minutes approval committee should be appointed. Did that happen in this case? If not, there's no body to accept the minutes until the next convention. 

But let's set aside for a minute the fact that it's a convention, and just talk about minutes. The secretary makes notes. They do not become minutes until they are presented to the assembly as draft minutes, then accepted by the body as minutes. The secretary includes in the notes whatever he thinks best (while following the rules in RONR). If they are distributed ahead of the next meeting, the President, and anyone else, can make suggestions - or even write their own draft minutes to be presented as a substitute while the minutes are pending for acceptance. But the decision as to what, exactly, the minutes will say belongs to the assembly. When the minutes are pending for adoption, the body can deal with all amendments. Once there are no more amendments to deal with, the minutes stand accepted, since there is no such thing as simply not accepting minutes - the only objection to accepting the minutes would be that something is wrong with them, and the solution is to amend them; thus, there is no note on accepting the minutes.

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No rule in RONR requires the secretary to show the draft of a meeting's minutes to the president before the meeting at which the minutes will be read and approved by the assembly.  Ordinarily, the president becomes aware of the content at the same time other members do, at the time the minutes are read at the meeting.

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