Voting without a motion and other questions

[Guest Paul]

To keep it somewhat simple: In December our Board agreed to have a meeting in January to vote to choose between option A or option B. Option A was to take our annual rules test and have it count for the current athletic season, Option B was to use the rules test from the previous season and have it carried over to the upcoming athletic season (the is the current operating procedure) . The President asked at the December meeting, if there were any other options that any Board member wanted to add and all agreed these would be the only two options to be discussed in January. The President opened the meeting and the debate began. During the debate a Board member requested the President consider another option, adding the two previous test scores, and using the average to count for the upcoming athletic season. The President ruled out the last option, citing the Board had agreed at the December meeting that only option A and B would be voted on and no other options were presented in December for discussion. When the discussion ended, the President called for a vote on the two options. There was no motion offered for option A or B. The President requested a show of hands for option A and a show of hands for option B. Option A received the most votes.

The By-laws require changing to accept option A.

A request to change the By-laws was sent to the Governance Committee for recommendation to the Board to accept option A and the committee voted to recommend to the Board to change the By-laws.

There will be a vote by the Board at the next meeting to vote on the recommended change.

Questions:

Is/was a motion required to vote on the options agreed to at the January meeting?

Was the President out of order not to include the third option?

Since the By-laws have to be changed was the vote taken on the two options in January a moot point and nothing more than a vote for the Board to decide if there were enough votes to change the By-laws?

      

[Josh Martin]

9 minutes ago, Guest Paul said:

Is/was a motion required to vote on the options agreed to at the January meeting?

A motion was required, but a motion to "vote on the options" was not in order. Instead, a member should have moved to adopt the option the member preferred. If some member instead preferred the other option, or some other option, or perhaps the same option with slight modifications, this could be addressed through means of motions to Amend.

It is, however, too late to raise a Point of Order regarding this matter at this time.

10 minutes ago, Guest Paul said:

Was the President out of order not to include the third option?

Yes. Due to the rules regarding the freedom of each new session, the board cannot decide that, at a future meeting, only two particular options in regard to a issue will be in order. Based upon the facts presented, I see no reason why a motion to adopt this third option would have been out of order.

It is, however, too late to raise a Point of Order regarding this matter at this time.

11 minutes ago, Guest Paul said:

Since the By-laws have to be changed was the vote taken on the two options in January a moot point and nothing more than a vote for the Board to decide if there were enough votes to change the By-laws?

If it is in fact correct that the bylaws will need to be changed in order to implement Option A, then it is correct that a motion regarding Option A does not actually mean much of anything, except I suppose that it expresses the board's view that it supports this option. It will not actually be in effect unless and until the bylaws are amended through the appropriate procedures to do so.

[Rob Elsman]

Consideration of multiple main motions simultaneously violates the fundamental principle of parliamentary law that only one main motion can be pending at a time.  The common parliamentary law does not permit selection of one option from several, a la carte, so to speak.

[Atul Kapur]

16 minutes ago, Rob Elsman said:

The common parliamentary law does not permit selection of one option from several, a la carte, so to speak.

Except through the device of Filling a Blank. (Not that I would have recommended using that process in this situation.)

[Richard Brown]

9 minutes ago, Atul Kapur said:

Except through the device of Filling a Blank. (Not that I would have recommended using that process in this situation.)

I was all prepared to start typing to say the same thing!