Can a member who has more than one vote make a motion and second it himself?

[Guest tmckeown@hotmail.com]

can a member who has more than one vote make a motion and second it himself

[Guest Puzzling]

14 minutes ago, Guest tmckeown@hotmail.com said:

can a member who has more than one vote make a motion and second it himself

RONR does not allow proxies so members do not get more than one vote and therefore the problem does not appear.

Your bylaws should regulate this (an the use of proxies) 

 

[Josh Martin]

30 minutes ago, Guest tmckeown@hotmail.com said:

can a member who has more than one vote make a motion and second it himself

I do not think the fact that a member has more than one vote enables the member to second his own motions.

"After a motion has been made, another member who wishes it to be considered says, “I second the motion,” or, “I second it,” or even, “Second!”—without obtaining the floor, and in small assemblies without rising." RONR (12th ed.) 4:9, emphasis added

I think the specific circumstances, however, may make the issue more complex. The purpose of a second is based upon the idea that if only one member supports discussing a motion, the motion has virtually no chance of being adopted, and therefore discussing the motion is a waste of the assembly's time. This idea is based upon the assumption, however, that each member has only one vote. In circumstances where members have more than one vote, this idea may no longer be correct, depending upon exactly how many votes the particular member has and how many votes other members have. So while I still do not think a member could ever second his own motions, I do think that in situations where a member has a very large number of votes in comparison to the full assembly (especially if the member has a majority of the total votes), this might suggest that the requirement of a second should not be applied to that member.

"The requirement of a second is for the chair’s guidance whether to state the question on the motion, thus placing it before the assembly. Its purpose is to prevent time from being consumed by the assembly’s having to dispose of a motion that only one person wants to see introduced." RONR (12th ed.) 4:12

Ultimately, this is a question the organization will have to answer for itself, because if the organization's rules permit a member to have more than one vote, the organization has deviated from one of the most basic principles of a deliberative assembly. As a result, the rules in RONR will not be fully applicable.

"A deliberative assembly—the kind of gathering to which parliamentary law is generally understood to apply—has the following distinguishing characteristics:

...

In any decision made, the opinion of each member present has equal weight as expressed by vote" RONR (12th ed.) 1:1

"The rules in this book are principally applicable to meeting bodies possessing all of the foregoing characteristics. Certain of these parliamentary rules or customs may sometimes also find application in other gatherings which, although resembling the deliberative assembly in varying degrees, do not have all of its attributes as listed above." RONR (12th ed.) 1:2

"A proxy is a power of attorney given by one person to another to vote in his stead; the term also designates the person who holds the power of attorney. Proxy voting is not permitted in ordinary deliberative assemblies unless the laws of the state in which the society is incorporated require it, or the charter or bylaws of the organization provide for it. Ordinarily it should neither be allowed nor required, because proxy voting is incompatible with the essential characteristics of a deliberative assembly in which membership is individual, personal, and nontransferable." RONR (12th ed.) 45:70

12 minutes ago, Guest Puzzling said:

RONR does not allow proxies so members do not get more than one vote and therefore the problem does not appear.

Your bylaws should regulate this (an the use of proxies) 

I would note that proxy voting is not necessarily the only possible explanation for why members might have more than one vote. Members might also have more than one vote on their own rather than due to collecting votes from other members. This might occur, for instance, because the votes are based upon ownership of properties, and the member owns more than one property. Certainly, however, RONR does not permit this either, so it is still correct that the organization's own rules should regulate how this works.

Edited January 30, 2021 at 03:04 PM by Josh Martin

[Richard Brown]

2 hours ago, Guest Puzzling said:

RONR does not allow proxies so members do not get more than one vote and therefore the problem does not appear.

As. Mr. Martin pointed out in his response, it is quite possible for a member to have more than one vote. This probably happens most frequently with various types of homeowner associations. It can also happen in other situation is, including most notably corporations in which the members own shares. 

[Richard Brown]

4 hours ago, Josh Martin said:

I do not think the fact that a member has more than one vote enables the member to second his own motions.

Josh, perhaps I am misremembering, but didn’t you state just the opposite opinion in response to a similar question a few weeks ago? I was of the opinion that a member with more than one vote cannot second his own motion, but I know someone on here who we respect, and I thought it was you, opined that it is permissible. If it wasn’t you, was it was it perhaps Mr. Honemann?

Edited to add: I have tried without success to find the previous thread that I referred to.  Does anyone else remember that thread from a few weeks ago?

Edited January 30, 2021 at 07:56 PM by Richard Brown
Added last paragraph

[Guest Puzzling]

1 hour ago, Richard Brown said:

Edited to add: I have tried without success to find the previous thread that I referred to.  Does anyone else remember that thread from a few weeks ago?

Maybe

but it is a bit longer ago.

 

[Richard Brown]

Thank you, Guest Puzzling, that is the thread I was thinking of.  It was about four and a half months ago.... I think maybe that qualifies as "several weeks ago". 

[Josh Martin]

1 hour ago, Richard Brown said:

Josh, perhaps I am misremembering, but didn’t you state just the opposite opinion in response to a similar question a few weeks ago? I was of the opinion that a member with more than one vote cannot second his own motion, but I know someone on here who we respect, and I thought it was you, opined that it is permissible. If it wasn’t you, was it was it perhaps Mr. Honemann?

I don't think what I have said here directly contradicts what I said in the thread in question. I don't believe I suggested there that having two votes, in and of itself, meant that a member could second his own motion. I did indicate that there may be some circumstances in which this could occur (such as if, under the organization's rules, a single person is capable of being multiple members), and also indicated (as I did here) that depending upon exactly how many votes the member had, this may suggest that the requirement of a second should be overlooked as the reasoning for the requirement of a second no longer applies.

Some other well-respected members of this forum (including Mr. Honemann) did suggest that in a society where a member has a number of votes equal to the number of lots he owns, a member who owns more than one lot may second his own motion. I am not entirely certain how far this reasoning can be generalized. In the present thread, we are not provided with an explanation as to why the member has multiple votes.

In the long run, I think Mr. Elsman has it quite right in that thread that an organization which deviates from the "one person one vote" rule should adopt its own rules to address these matters.

Edited January 30, 2021 at 08:34 PM by Josh Martin