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Adding voting options


Guest Matt Carter

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Our organization bylaws state: "Robert’s Rules of Order, Revised, shall be the parliamentary authority in matters of procedure not specifically covered by these bylaws."

In another section on electing the board it is very specific about mailing paper ballots and counting them on the first Monday of October. "The Secretary shall mail to each member a ballot....shall be by ballot" are the words it uses.

It is being claimed that because the bylaws do not exclude electronic voting, the election can include both a mail ballot and an online voting system the office and some volunteers invented. The bylaws are very old, written well before the internet and electronic voting.

My view is this requires a bylaw change. I am open to being wrong. Comments please.

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Our organization bylaws state: "Robert’s Rules of Order, Revised, shall be the parliamentary authority in matters of procedure not specifically covered by these bylaws."

In another section on electing the board it is very specific about mailing paper ballots and counting them on the first Monday of October. "The Secretary shall mail to each member a ballot....shall be by ballot" are the words it uses.

It is being claimed that because the bylaws do not exclude electronic voting, the election can include both a mail ballot and an online voting system the office and some volunteers invented. The bylaws are very old, written well before the internet and electronic voting.

My view is this requires a bylaw change. I am open to being wrong. Comments please.

You've got it exactly right. Electronic absentee voting must be specifically authorized in the Bylaws to be valid.

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Our organization bylaws state: "Robert’s Rules of Order, Revised, shall be the parliamentary authority in matters of procedure not specifically covered by these bylaws."

In another section on electing the board it is very specific about mailing paper ballots and counting them on the first Monday of October. "The Secretary shall mail to each member a ballot....shall be by ballot" are the words it uses.

It is being claimed that because the bylaws do not exclude electronic voting, the election can include both a mail ballot and an online voting system the office and some volunteers invented. The bylaws are very old, written well before the internet and electronic voting.

My view is this requires a bylaw change. I am open to being wrong. Comments please.

See RONR(10th ed.), p. 409, l. 1-2, for the bylaw requirement.

Also, if the bylaws require the election of board members to be by ballot, using another form is not allowed. See RONR(10th ed.), p. 398, l. 28-29.

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My view is this requires a bylaw change. I am open to being wrong.

It's up to your organization to interpret its bylaws, something that can only be properly done by reading them in their entirety.

That said, a ballot need not be a piece of paper. It could, for example, be a black ball or a white ball (the origin of the word "ballot").

And, though most here would argue that "mail" means postal mail, you could certainly make an argument for e-mail.

Once your organization figures it out, amend the bylaws to remove any ambiguities.

In any event, different methods of voting should never be combined.

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In any event, different methods of voting should never be combined.

Well, I don't know if I'd say that. What RONR says is that votes at a meeting should never be combined with absentee votes. I could see different forms of absentee voting being combined, although certainly great care would need to be taken to ensure there were no inequities.

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