Are zoom meetings an acceptable voting method when making bylaw changes

[Guest Linda Breckinridge]

Zoom meetings 

[Josh Martin]

On 2/15/2024 at 3:47 PM, Guest Linda Breckinridge said:

Are zoom meetings an acceptable voting method when making bylaw changes

Electronic meetings are not acceptable, period, unless authorized by the organization's bylaws or applicable law.

"Except as authorized in the bylaws, the business of an organization or board can be validly transacted only at a regular or properly called meeting—that is, as defined in 8:2(1), a single official gathering in one room or area—of the assembly of its members at which a quorum is present.

Among some organizations, there is an increasing preference, especially in the case of a relatively small board or other assembly, to transact business at electronic meetings—that is, at meetings at which, rather than all participating members being physically present in one room or area as in traditional (or “face-to-face”) meetings, some or all of them communicate with the others through electronic means such as the Internet or by telephone. A group that holds such alternative meetings does not lose its character as a deliberative assembly (see 1:1) so long as the meetings provide, at a minimum, conditions of opportunity for simultaneous aural communication among all participating members equivalent to those of meetings held in one room or area. Under such conditions, an electronic meeting that is properly authorized in the bylaws is treated as though it were a meeting at which all the members who are participating are actually present." RONR (12th ed.) 9:30-31