Votes required to be an elected official

[Guest P.D. Fabian]

45 members voted by email ballot in an election, but only 41 members voted with 4 abstaining for 2nd Vice President.

The final result was "A" received 21 votes & "B" received 20.

Does this mean "A" won the election with a majority 21/41 = 56% ? or neither won 21/45 =46.6%?

If neither won, do we have a re-vote just 2nd Vice President?

[Atul Kapur]

It depends on what your rules about electing by email voting say.

Generally, the rule in RONR would ignore the 4 abstentions so 21:20 is a majority vote, so would be enough to elect.

Edited May 30, 2023 at 11:11 AM by Atul Kapur

[Gary Novosielski]

On 5/30/2023 at 5:35 AM, Guest P.D. Fabian said:

45 members voted by email ballot in an election, but only 41 members voted with 4 abstaining for 2nd Vice President.

The final result was "A" received 21 votes & "B" received 20.

Does this mean "A" won the election with a majority 21/41 = 56% ? or neither won 21/45 =46.6%?

If neither won, do we have a re-vote just 2nd Vice President?

If the rules in RONR apply, when a ballot contains sections for different offices, e.g., president, VP, secretary, etc., each section is treated like a separate election.  So if only 41 people voted in the VP election, then you use 21/41 and the VP election is complete.  The denominator may change from one section to another based on the number of votes cast in each.

A section  which is left left blank, or in some other way fails to express a preference, is an abstention, and is ignored.  However a vote expressing a preference for an ineligible candidate, even if that candidate is, say Donald Duck, counts as a vote, albeit an illegal one, and is credited to no candidate, but adds to the denominator.  If no candidate gets a majority, a second ballot is held for that office.