Order of voting about motions

[Guest Klaus Boehnke]

Dear Community,

 

I am past president of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP), RRoO are mentioned in our constitution as binding rules on procedural question. We currently have a heated debate of whether and how to hold our international congress in 2022.

 

There are three seconded motions on the table

 

No Congress, Face-to-Face Congress, and Virtual Congress. How do we determine the order.

My reading of RRoO is that NO CONGRESS is the most far reaching motion and has to be voted uopen first.

Am I correct

 

Klaus 

 

 

[Dan Honemann]

On 9/18/2021 at 1:13 AM, Guest Klaus Boehnke said:

Dear Community,

 

I am past president of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP), RRoO are mentioned in our constitution as binding rules on procedural question. We currently have a heated debate of whether and how to hold our international congress in 2022.

 

There are three seconded motions on the table

 

No Congress, Face-to-Face Congress, and Virtual Congress. How do we determine the order.

My reading of RRoO is that NO CONGRESS is the most far reaching motion and has to be voted uopen first.

Am I correct

 

Klaus 

 

 

What's going on now? Are you in the middle of some virtual meeting? How did these "three seconded motions" get "on the table"?

[Guest Klaus Boehnke]

We had virtual meetings which - because of full-globe time zone spead -- had to be held twice and the voting on the motions will now have to be done via eletronic ballotw

ing. My question thus is whether the order is "first-come-first serve" or "most far reaching first." The latter would be what I consider as right, because otherwise we could have asituation, where there is a majority for 'virtual' (the first motion floored) AND later also for 'NO congress', Klaus

[Joshua Katz]

I'm not really sure what's going on, but I suspect the answer will involve interpreting your rules, not RONR. So far as RONR is concerned, there should be one pending motion at a time, and so there's no way for your situation (if I understand it properly) to arise. If your rules don't cover it, well, that's a difficulty with trying to make decisions in this way, and I guess the organization will have to do what a majority thinks is right. But getting a vote on what to do could be challenging...

So how would you decide this matter per RONR? You'd move one, then another would be moved as a substitute. During debate, someone would say that if the substitute is voted down, he will propose the third.

 

[Dan Honemann]

I agree with Mr. Katz; this is not a situation which is governed by the rules in RONR, since its rules are designed for the conduct of business in deliberative assemblies.  In any event, it is certainly not correct to say, as you have suggested, that under the rules in RONR the "most far reaching motion" must be voted on first. 

 

 

[Atul Kapur]

You are beyond RONR, which does not provide for asynchronous meetings.

So may I suggest that you treat this as a variation of filling a blank. "I move that we hold _____ Congress in 2022" with the three options being "and in-person", "a virtual", and "no".

Since we are well beyond RONR, I will further suggest that you allow your members to vote on all three options. The one that gets the highest number of votes in favour, presuming it is a majority, would then be the decision of the voters.

Edited September 18, 2021 at 03:49 PM by Atul Kapur

[Dan Honemann]

On 9/18/2021 at 11:48 AM, Atul Kapur said:

You are beyond RONR, which does not provide for asynchronous meetings.

So may I suggest that you treat this as a variation of filling a blank. "I move that we hold _____ Congress in 2022" with the three options being "and in-person", "a virtual", and "no".

Since we are well beyond RONR, I will further suggest that you allow your members to vote on all three options. The one that gets the highest number of votes in favour, presuming it is a majority, would then be the decision of the voters.

Not a bad idea if you treat it as if the motion containing the blank is one which has already been adopted.

[Shmuel Gerber]

On 9/18/2021 at 7:06 AM, Guest Klaus Boehnke said:

We had virtual meetings which - because of full-globe time zone spead -- had to be held twice and the voting on the motions will now have to be done via eletronic ballotw

ing. My question thus is whether the order is "first-come-first serve" or "most far reaching first." The latter would be what I consider as right, because otherwise we could have asituation, where there is a majority for 'virtual' (the first motion floored) AND later also for 'NO congress', Klaus

On 9/18/2021 at 11:48 AM, Atul Kapur said:

So may I suggest that you treat this as a variation of filling a blank. "I move that we hold _____ Congress in 2022" with the three options being "and in-person", "a virtual", and "no".

I think the original poster is referring to what RONR says about filling blanks, which includes:

12:108 … "Sometimes the particular nature of the blank determines the order in which proposals for filling it should be put to vote. Typical instances of this kind are blanks to be filled with amounts of money. In such cases it is advisable, whenever a logical order is apparent, to arrange the proposed entries so that the one least likely to be acceptable will be voted on first, and so on. New supporters may then be gained with each succeeding vote until a majority in favor of one entry is reached."

and 12:111 … "When a blank is to be filled with a place, date, or number, a choice of methods for arranging and voting on the proposals can be made as follows:
a) Voting on the suggestions in the order in which they are offered, as when filling a blank with names.
b) Voting on the proposals in the order of their probable acceptability, beginning with the least popular choice, as when filling a blank with an amount.
c) (If there is no clear-cut reason why either increasing or decreasing order would be preferable), voting first on the largest number, longest time, or most distant date, and so on.
The particular circumstances must determine the order to be used."

If a procedure like this is going to be used, where the first question to receive a majority in favor is chosen, I think it would make sense to put the question first on the question of holding the meeting face-to-face (if it seems that is likely to be less popular than holding it virtually). If that is adopted by majority, you're done; if rejected, put the question on holding the meeting virtually. If that question is adopted, it's adopted; and if it's rejected, then you're also done.

In this scenario, I'm assuming that if no particular meeting proposal is approved, then no meeting will be held at all, so there is no reason to hold a vote on the question of "no meeting".

[Dan Honemann]

On 9/18/2021 at 10:47 PM, Shmuel Gerber said:

In this scenario, I'm assuming that if no particular meeting proposal is approved, then no meeting will be held at all, so there is no reason to hold a vote on the question of "no meeting".

But the original poster, who is in possession of all of the facts (and we have precious few), appears to think that all three of these seconded motions must be voted on, much the same as if they were all proposed amendments to the bylaws. Which makes one wonder what, exactly, do the bylaws say about holding an international congress in 2022.