Contested vote on Leadership Chairman re-election "appealed" out of in-session convention to a separately organized (separate rules) appeal board

[Guest Ben A.]

....In our annual Association meeting (where Association By-laws supersede Robert's rules) a credential set of 330 delegates met to elect the Executive Council Chair and Vice Chairs by a simple majority of delegates present. A floor objection to the Nominating Committee's slate passed and permitted further floor nominations, and a challenger contested the position of Chair for the current Association's Chairmanship. Members voted 165 for the incumbent Chair and 164 for the challenger. There was no majority +1 vote threshold broken for the incumbent. Under Roberts the Convention Chair, with input from the Parliamentarian a delegate moved for an immediate revote.  In the revote the incumbent received   148 votes and the challenger 172.  The Association (Convention) Chair ruled the challenger- won and gaveled her in.    The incumbent Association Executive Council Chair immediately "appealed" the Chair's ruling (not an objection), NOT TO THE EXISTING Association caucus in front of him, he used the "appeal", under the Association by-laws, to appeal, out from under Robert's Rules, to a separate appeals board chartered by the By-Laws.  

My question: isn’t the proper parliamentarian/procedure for the aggrieved Incumbent Chair to object to the Convention Chair’s ruling and move to reject the Convention Chair's ruling and have a majority vote to overturn the Convention Chair’s decision?  What are the Robert’s Rules that disposition his “appeal” as out of order / not relevant as any “appeal” should have gone right back to caucus of 330 delegates to be resolved?  Should we have raised a point of order after his "appeal" asking for the Convention Chair to rule his "appeal" out of order and over ruled?    Thank you.

[Richard Brown]

Guest Ben, I'm not able to follow all that happened.  In addition, much depends on your own bylaws and customized rules, none of which we have seen.   About all I can say with any degree of confidence from the facts you presented is that if a regular majority vote was required to elect the executive council chair, and if the incumbent received 165 votes and the challenger received 164 votes, then per the rules in RONR the incumbent received a majority of the votes cast and was elected.  If your rules provide otherwise, then we can't advise you any further without knowing what  those rules are.... and even then, it will ultimately be up to your organization to interpret its own rules if they are different from those in RONR.  The same goes for appeals:  you seem to have customized rules on appeals that are different from those in RONR.

For openers, why don't you provide us with the EXACT language of your bylaw regarding the vote required to elect the chair.  Please don't paraphrase, quote the provision exactly.  There can be a significant difference between a regular "majority vote" and "the vote of a majority of the delegates present" (or registered).  Depending on what your bylaws say, it is possible that nobody won on the first ballot and repeat balloting until someone was elected was necessary.  The second vote might well have been proper.

 

[Atul Kapur]

Agreeing with Mr. Brown, there is one question that jumps out right away.

6 hours ago, Guest Ben A. said:

Members voted 165 for the incumbent Chair and 164 for the challenger. There was no majority +1 vote threshold broken for the incumbent.

Please explain this "majority +1 vote threshold" you mention.

If 329 votes were cast, then 165 votes is a majority (more than half). If 330 votes were cast, then did the final vote express a preference for anyone (even if not one of the two candidates)? 

[Josh Martin]

11 hours ago, Guest Ben A. said:

My question: isn’t the proper parliamentarian/procedure for the aggrieved Incumbent Chair to object to the Convention Chair’s ruling and move to reject the Convention Chair's ruling and have a majority vote to overturn the Convention Chair’s decision?  What are the Robert’s Rules that disposition his “appeal” as out of order / not relevant as any “appeal” should have gone right back to caucus of 330 delegates to be resolved? 

The proper procedure under RONR would be for the member to move to Appeal from the chair's ruling and (if seconded) the appeal would have then been decided by the assembly. As you say, a majority vote would have been required to overturn the chair's ruling.

We are told, however, that "he used the "appeal", under the Association by-laws, to appeal, out from under Robert's Rules, to a separate appeals board chartered by the By-Laws." If the organization's bylaws do in fact have a "separate appeals board," then the action taken may well have been proper under the organization's bylaws. The organization's bylaws take precedence over RONR.

11 hours ago, Guest Ben A. said:

Should we have raised a point of order after his "appeal" asking for the Convention Chair to rule his "appeal" out of order and over ruled?

I'm somewhat unclear on how this "appeals board" works. It's not clear to me that any action was actually taken at the time, or if the member was simply announcing his intent to submit an appeal to the appeals board. A Point of Order regarding an action a member intends to take at some time in the future is not in order.

To the extent that some action was indeed happening in the meeting itself, and it was believed that action was in violation of the assembly's rules, a member could have raised a Point of Order. I know nothing about what the organization's bylaws say regarding this Appeals Board, so I don't know whether such a Point of Order should have been ruled well taken.

11 hours ago, Guest Ben A. said:

 In the revote the incumbent received   148 votes and the challenger 172.  The Association (Convention) Chair ruled the challenger- won and gaveled her in.    The incumbent Association Executive Council Chair immediately "appealed" the Chair's ruling

I'm not entirely clear what "ruling" the member was purporting to appeal from. The chair's declaration of the result of the election is not a ruling and cannot be appealed from. If the member believed some violation of the rules had occurred which would affect the election, the member should have raised a Point of Order that the election was invalid, stated the reasons why, the chair would rule on that Point of Order, and then there would be something to appeal from. I don't know, however, how this interacts with the "appeals board" in the organization's bylaws.

Because the member simply "appealed" from the declaration that the other candidate won, it is not entirely clear what the grounds for the "appeal" are, and therefore I do not know whether a Point of Order on this matter should have been ruled well taken. The speculation appears to be that the "appeal" was on the grounds that a second vote should not have been taken as the incumbent chair won the first vote. I would need specific quotations from the bylaws regarding the voting threshold for election to answer that question, as well as whether any other ballots were cast and (if so) how those ballots were marked.