Local Teachers Union

[Guest teacherbyday]

Our local organization bylaws states we will follow Roberts Rules. So here is what happened. Our current VP did not state to her leadership team she was running for President. When the ballot went out, her name was on it. Now that she won the election this leaves the vp position vacant.

Questions:

1. Can she nominate herself to the ballot?
2. Can she run for president without resigning for VP?

Our bylaws does not give specific guidelines it only states deadlines and we follow Roberts Rules

[Dan Honemann]

As far as the rules in Robert's Rules of Order are concerned:

1. Yes, members can nominate themselves.

2. Yes, she can run for president without first resigning her position as VP.

[Guest Puzzling]

1 hour ago, Daniel H. Honemann said:

. Yes, she can run for president without first resigning her position as VP.

I do think she will have to resign her position as Vice President when elected as president. In any case she will not get 2 votes, (votes are one per member, not per office)

Also I do think you may already open nominations for the office of (new) vice president, so that you can hold those elections directly after the election for the president and she is elected.

[Dan Honemann]

20 minutes ago, Guest Puzzling said:

I do think she will have to resign her position as Vice President when elected as president. In any case she will not get 2 votes, (votes are one per member, not per office)

 

1 hour ago, Guest teacherbyday said:

Now that she won the election this leaves the vp position vacant.

 

[RSW]

10 hours ago, Daniel H. Honemann said:

11 hours ago, Guest Puzzling said:

I do think she will have to resign her position as Vice President when elected as president. In any case she will not get 2 votes, (votes are one per member, not per office)

 

RONR 45:31 provides:

Quote

(The assembly is free, however, to elect the same person to another office on a subsequent ballot, unless the bylaws prohibit a person from holding both offices simultaneously.)

This would *seem* to imply that somebody could hold multiple offices simultaneously unless the bylaws prohibit it, which would seem to imply that RONR contains no such prohibition.

Is there an exception for President that I'm missing? I didn't see anything relevant in RONR 47, but I may have missed something. I fully concede that it would be pretty silly for somebody to be both President and Vice President, but is it strictly forbidden?

[Rob Elsman]

52 minutes ago, RSW said:

...but is it strictly forbidden?

Yes, because it is silly. 😊

[Richard Brown]

50 minutes ago, RSW said:

RONR 45:31 provides:

This would *seem* to imply that somebody could hold multiple offices simultaneously unless the bylaws prohibit it, which would seem to imply that RONR contains no such prohibition.

Is there an exception for President that I'm missing? I didn't see anything relevant in RONR 47, but I may have missed something. I fully concede that it would be pretty silly for somebody to be both President and Vice President, but is it strictly forbidden?

But in this case there is no indication that the member in question actually ran for the office of vice president nor that she was elected to it. We were told that she ran for and was elected president and that the office of vice president is vacant.  That leads me to believe that no one ran for vice president, but we Have not been told that explicitly. We also don’t know what, if anything, the bylaws say about officers continuing to hold office until their successors are elected.

The original post is short on details so it is difficult for us to say much more than that it was perfectly permissible for her to have run as president without first stepping down as vice president if there was no prohibition in the bylaws. That was, in fact, the only question asked in the original post.

[RSW]

1 hour ago, Richard Brown said:

But in this case there is no indication that the member in question actually ran for the office of vice president nor that she was elected to it.

Agreed, although OP's assessment of whether she still held the office could be based on the very assumption that I'm questioning below. 

1 hour ago, Richard Brown said:

We were told that she ran for and was elected president and that the office of vice president is vacant.  That leads me to believe that no one ran for vice president, but we Have not been told that explicitly.

The reason I quoted Mr. Honemann's quoting of Guest Puzzling's reply is that he quoted the text as if it were a certainty that she would have to resign as VP in order to accept the role of president.

I believe that OP considers that statement true, but because it's not clear to me from RONR I'm wondering if RONR provides the requirement somewhere that I'm missing as Mr. Honemann is certainly more familiar with this topic than I am.  If it were a matter of bylaws providing for it, I would have expected the note that RONR contains no such prohibition but that an organization's bylaws may have more to say on the matter.

1 hour ago, Rob Elsman said:

Yes, because it is silly. 😊

I'm a member of a rather large organization with semi-autonomous sub-groups where people *routinely* hold multiple executive offices simultaneously. I still think it's bizarre, but it happens - and as far as I'm aware our bylaws don't explicitly carve out the exceptions *other than* to dictate that two specific positions can't be the same person.

The fact that we think something is silly doesn't mean it's "strictly forbidden".

[Guest Puzzling]

Ronr 47:23 describes the duty of the vice president  namely to serve as president when the president vacated the chair.

It is a bit physically impossible to be on the chair and to vacate it at the same time. 

So therefore I think the posts can not be held by the same person...

But I guess a straightforward rule in RONR that both posts should not be held by the same person (except if the bylaws  allow it) would be preferable, but then what about the offices of President and president-elect if the organisation wants that the president to be elected for 2 or more terms.

[Josh Martin]

11 hours ago, RSW said:

Is there an exception for President that I'm missing? I didn't see anything relevant in RONR 47, but I may have missed something. I fully concede that it would be pretty silly for somebody to be both President and Vice President, but is it strictly forbidden?

It is not strictly forbidden, but as you say, it is pretty silly.

I note, however, that the question at issue in this particular appears to be whether the Vice President is required to resign from that office prior to the election, and I think we can all agree that the answer to that is clearly "No."

I don't think the OP's question actually has anything to do with the President and Vice President issue. It could have been any two offices.

10 hours ago, Richard Brown said:

We were told that she ran for and was elected president and that the office of vice president is vacant.  That leads me to believe that no one ran for vice president, but we Have not been told that explicitly. We also don’t know what, if anything, the bylaws say about officers continuing to hold office until their successors are elected.

Another possibility is that the terms of the President and Vice President are staggered.

8 hours ago, RSW said:

I believe that OP considers that statement true, but because it's not clear to me from RONR I'm wondering if RONR provides the requirement somewhere that I'm missing as Mr. Honemann is certainly more familiar with this topic than I am.  If it were a matter of bylaws providing for it, I would have expected the note that RONR contains no such prohibition but that an organization's bylaws may have more to say on the matter.

My understanding of the facts is that the person in question is not crazy and therefore has no desire to serve as both President and Vice President and has resigned (or will resign) as Vice President following that person's election as President. So I don't think the question of whether there is a prohibition on this enters into it.

3 hours ago, Guest Puzzling said:

Ronr 47:23 describes the duty of the vice president  namely to serve as president when the president vacated the chair.

It is a bit physically impossible to be on the chair and to vacate it at the same time. 

So therefore I think the posts can not be held by the same person...

But I guess a straightforward rule in RONR that both posts should not be held by the same person (except if the bylaws  allow it) would be preferable, but then what about the offices of President and president-elect if the organisation wants that the president to be elected for 2 or more terms.

I can understand this view, but I'm not sure exactly what problem we are trying to solve. Is anyone aware of societies which are electing people as President and Vice President? Or is common sense already serving as enough of a prohibition?

Edited April 18, 2021 at 01:11 PM by Josh Martin

[RSW]

42 minutes ago, Josh Martin said:

I note, however, that the question at issue in this particular appears to be whether the Vice President is required to resign from that office prior to the election, and I think we can all agree that the answer to that is clearly "No."

Absolutely agree. 

42 minutes ago, Josh Martin said:

My understanding of the facts is that the person in question is not crazy and therefore has no desire to serve as both President and Vice President and has resigned (or will resign) as Vice President following that person's election as President. So I don't think the question of whether there is a prohibition on this enters into it.

I agree 100% that if the person has submitted a resignation post-election the issue is indeed closed in the case of OP's organization. OP's statement was that "Now that she won the election this leaves the vp position vacant," and it seemed to me as if OP was stating that the winning itself vacated the VP position.

I may be reading too closely on this and seeing something that's not there, but that statement by itself ("this leaves the vp position vacant") is not inherently true by my reading. The bylaws would either have to provide for it happening automatically (expiration of term, or that an officer may only hold one office), or the VP would have to submit their resignation as you believe likely already happened. Otherwise, they're *still the vice president* post-election.

Practically speaking, in such a case (no resignation submitted / accepted) the office is not vacant.

42 minutes ago, Josh Martin said:

I can understand this view, but I'm not sure exactly what problem we are trying to solve. Is anyone aware of societies which are electing people as President and Vice President?

Sure. In a group like a Toastmasters club, there's a president and three VPs with roles differentiated by areas of responsibility. This is in addition to secretary, treasurer, and SAA. There's a hierarchy of the VPs provided for by bylaws, but the president and secretary are *required* offices where any given VP is *optional*.

In such a case, it's not completely unheard of for the president and the highest-ranking VP to be held by the same person as the president is an office that's absolutely required, but the highest-ranking VP actually has the most responsibility on a day-to-day basis so is thus essential rather than required.

Is it optimal? No. Is it *wise*? No, unless the organization ceases to exist otherwise, in which case it depends on how much one values the organization's continued existence. But is it *legal*, per RONR? As far as I can tell, yes.

And particularly, per my thought above, a VP doing something like stepping up to fill a vacancy of the presidency mid-term would not procedurally vacate that VP's office. They would have to take separate action to do so.

In any similar organization (bylaws with hard requirements that offices be filled, and a lack of candidates to do so - as is potentially the case with OP's organization, as the VP spot seemingly stands vacant) I could see the concept being very applicable.

Edited April 18, 2021 at 01:53 PM by RSW

[Josh Martin]

3 hours ago, RSW said:

Sure. In a group like a Toastmasters club, there's a president and three VPs with roles differentiated by areas of responsibility. This is in addition to secretary, treasurer, and SAA. There's a hierarchy of the VPs provided for by bylaws, but the president and secretary are *required* offices where any given VP is *optional*.

In such a case, it's not completely unheard of for the president and the highest-ranking VP to be held by the same person as the president is an office that's absolutely required, but the highest-ranking VP actually has the most responsibility on a day-to-day basis so is thus essential rather than required.

Thank you. So it appears that some organizations are electing a person as President and Vice President because, in their particular circumstances, there is a logical reason for doing so.

So this seems to further demonstrate that there is not a problem to solve here.

[Guest Puzzling]

A problem can occur if some tasks are specially assigned to the vice president in the bylaws.

if the vice president becomes president who  gets the duties assigned to the vice president? But I guess that if an organization does assigns duties to the vice president it must regulate this well

[Josh Martin]

52 minutes ago, Guest Puzzling said:

A problem can occur if some tasks are specially assigned to the vice president in the bylaws.

if the vice president becomes president who  gets the duties assigned to the vice president? But I guess that if an organization does assigns duties to the vice president it must regulate this well

If a vacancy arises in the office of Vice President, then that vacancy needs to be filled.

[Atul Kapur]

5 hours ago, RSW said:

And particularly, per my thought above, a VP doing something like stepping up to fill a vacancy of the presidency mid-term would not procedurally vacate that VP's office. They would have to take separate action to do so.

I disagree. This is different from being elected to both positions. 

See RONR (12th ed.) 56:32:

Quote

If the bylaws are silent as to the method of filling a vacancy in the specific case of the presidency, the vice-president or first vice-president automatically becomes president for the remainder of the term, and the vacancy to be filled arises in the vice-presidency or
lowest-ranking vice-presidency

Also see RONR (12th ed.) 47:28 and 29. They indicate that the vice-president automatically becomes president in the event of the president's resignation, death, or removal.

47:29 makes clear that the vice-president's "automatic promotion to a higher office" creates a vacancy in the office of vice-president (in the office of first vice-president, in the case of multiple vice-presidents).