Meeting Length

[deliacm]

If a meeting agenda is provided to members that indicates a meeting is from 10:30-11:30, are any votes taken after 11:30 void? I had a meeting today in which a member indicated that since a vote was taken at 11:35, it was null and void.

[Josh Martin]

If a meeting agenda is provided to members that indicates a meeting is from 10:30-11:30, are any votes taken after 11:30 void? I had a meeting today in which a member indicated that since a vote was taken at 11:35, it was null and void.

As far as the rules of RONR are concerned, no. If this is a tentative agenda which has been distributed prior to the meeting it has no authority whatsoever. Even if the agenda has been formally adopted by the assembly, the rules relating to the set time of adjournment are suspendable, so there is no continuing breach.

[Gary Novosielski]

If a meeting agenda is provided to members that indicates a meeting is from 10:30-11:30, are any votes taken after 11:30 void? I had a meeting today in which a member indicated that since a vote was taken at 11:35, it was null and void.

For clarity, are the following presumptions true?

• This objection was raised at the same meeting, after the vote was announced, and that the result was NOT to the liking of the person objecting. (Not that this matters officially; just testing my intuition.)
• The agenda was not formally adopted.
• Nobody raised a Point of Order, or a Call for the Orders of the Day when this item was taken up, or while it was being considered, or when debate had continued past 11:30.
• Nobody moved to Adjourn at any point during the discussion or, if so, any such motion failed.

If that's pretty much how it happened, there's nothing here to support this member's point, having taken advantage of no available parliamentary remedy in a timely manner.

The result of the vote stands.

This sort of objection may satirically be referred to as a Point of Personal Outrage, or an Appeal from the Decision of the Majority, neither of which are actually contained in RONR. :-)

[George Mervosh]

Gary, adopted agenda or no, unless they actually adjourned prior to that vote.....it doesn't matter.

[deliacm]

Thank you all for your replies. This was definitely a Point of Personal Outrage, as the member did not mention this until after the vote had occurred and it was not in his favor.

[Gary Novosielski]

Gary, adopted agenda or no, unless they actually adjourned prior to that vote.....it doesn't matter.

Quite right, but an adopted program would have made a call for the orders of the day sustainable, would it not? Granted, no such call was made in this instance, but "I'm just sayin'".

Seems to me that what we have here is the familiar situation of a member who treats a failure to get his/her own way as irrefutable evidence that the precepts of democracy, the rules of order, the rules of nature and of nature's god, or some combination of these, must have been violated.