Election of an officer erroneously left off the Ballot

[Guest Elle]

Hello 

I hope someone can help on this.  My organization will hold its Annual meeting tomorrow.  Our officers are elected to 2-year terms.Our Nominating committee just noticed an error on the ballot. Erroneously, our treasurer was left off the ballot. Can she nominated from the floor and elected by a vote of hands?  Or should the position remain vacant until the new president appoints her once the new Board term begins?  Or may we have ballots available when members sign in for the meeting? Thank you for your feedback.

[puzzling]

On 4/10/2023 at 7:30 AM, Guest Elle said:

 

Hello 

I hope someone can help on this.  My organization will hold its Annual meeting tomorrow.  Our officers are elected to 2-year terms.Our Nominating committee just noticed an error on the ballot. Erroneously, our treasurer was left off the ballot. Can she nominated from the floor and elected by a vote of hands?  Or should the position remain vacant until the new president appoints her once the new Board term begins?  Or may we have ballots available when members sign in for the meeting? Thank you for your feedback.

It  depends on what your bylaws say about nominations and elections.

If there is nothing in the bylaws (very unlikely) and only RONR is involved members can be nominated from the floor and if there is only one nomination for a post  there doesn't even have to an election.

[Josh Martin]

On 4/10/2023 at 1:30 AM, Guest Elle said:

Can she nominated from the floor and elected by a vote of hands?  Or should the position remain vacant until the new president appoints her once the new Board term begins?  Or may we have ballots available when members sign in for the meeting?

Certainly she can be nominated from the floor, unless something in your bylaws provides otherwise. (And even then, it is permissible to vote for persons who have not been nominated, unless your bylaws provide otherwise.) Electing her "by a vote of hands" may or may not be permissible.

If the bylaws require a ballot vote, and if they do not provide an exception when there is only one candidate, then a ballot vote must be taken. However, it is not a requirement to use preprinted ballots. The assembly could simply use blank slips of paper for the office of Treasurer.

In the alternative, if the bylaws do not require a ballot vote (or if they do provide an exception when there is only one candidate), then if the incumbent Treasurer is the only person nominated for Treasurer, the President should simply declare the Treasurer elected by acclamation.

Edited April 10, 2023 at 12:25 PM by Josh Martin

[Atul Kapur]

On 4/10/2023 at 2:30 AM, Guest Elle said:

Or may we have ballots available when members sign in for the meeting?

This makes the most sense to me. They do not need to be pre-printed and could just be blank sheets of paper, as long as you are able to control that only eligible voters cast a ballot and only cast one ballot each.

On 4/10/2023 at 2:30 AM, Guest Elle said:

Or should the position remain vacant until the new president appoints her once the new Board term begins?

I strongly discourage this approach, as it circumvents the meeting's authority to elect the person they prefer.

[Joshua Katz]

On 4/10/2023 at 1:30 AM, Guest Elle said:

Our Nominating committee just noticed an error on the ballot. Erroneously, our treasurer was left off the ballot. Can she nominated from the floor and elected by a vote of hands? 

I presume here that your treasurer was, in fact, nominated, and there was simply a printing error. In that case, it doesn't seem to me that the solution is to nominate her again; she's already nominated. The solution, it seems to me, if the ballots cannot be fixed, is to either get her on the ballot or other pre-printed options off the ballot - as Mr. Martin suggests, perhaps use a blank piece of paper. Or make an announcement instructing everyone to fix their ballot. 

[Gary Novosielski]

On 4/10/2023 at 2:30 AM, Guest Elle said:

Or should the position remain vacant until the new president appoints her once the new Board term begins?

That would not help.  The election still must be completed.  If the president has the power to fill vacancies, there is no unexpired term to be filled, since the term has been completed.  So any appointment would last only until the election is completed, which is still a requirement.  Use one of the methods that allows you to complete the election on schedule.