discussion of a motion after it is made and duly seconded

[Tom Miller]

Can the Chair proceed immediately to a vote after a motion is made and seconded without allowing for discussion of the motion?

[Joshua Katz]

Not if the motion is debatable. The assembly can choose to do so by adopting the previous question, however.

[Richard Brown]

2 hours ago, Tom Miller said:

Can the Chair proceed immediately to a vote after a motion is made and seconded without allowing for discussion of the motion?

Agreeing with Mr. Katz, as a general rule, the answer is no. An exception would be if it is a non-debatable motion, of which there are a few. However, even assuming that the motion was debatable and that the chair erred by not permitting debate, it is too late to do anything about that now. Someone should have raised a point of order at the time he refused to permit debate and then should have appealed the decision of the chair if he ruled that the Point of Order was not well taken and continued to refuse to permit debate.

We sometimes referred to that as the “you snooze, you lose“ rule. A timely Point of Order at the time of the breach must usually be made to correct such errors so that it can be corrected before the assembly moves on to other business. Once the assembly moves on to other business, it is usually too late, but there are some exceptions. Based on what we have been told so far, this does not appear to be one of those exceptions.  More information might be helpful in this regard