tie vote

[Guest Jeff]

In electing officers, one position ended in a tie vote. How should we handle this?

[George Mervosh]

Keep voting until the tie is broken. You can also consider re-opening nominations.....maybe a compromise candidate will appear.

[hmtcastle]

Keep voting until the tie is broken.

And by that Mr. Mervosh is not suggesting a "run-off". All candidates remain on the ballot (unless they voluntarily withdraw).

You keep voting until someone (who is willing to serve) is elected. The mere breaking of the tie may not accomplish that.

[Gary Novosielski]

There's nothing special about a tie vote in RONR. Any vote that requires a majority (for a motion or for a candidate) either succeeds or fails to achieve a majority. If the affirmative (or candidate) gets more than half of the votes cast, it succeeds. If not, it fails.

In any election, at most one candidate can get a majority, and the more candidates there are, the more likely that nobody will get a majority. Unless your bylaws specify some exception, you take a second, third, and successive ballots without eliminating anyone, until someone wins.

The winner is the person who gets not merely more votes than anyone else, but more votes than everyone else (put together).

[Kim Goldsworthy]

"... The winner is the person who gets not merely more votes than anyone else, but more votes than everyone else (put together)."

Um.... not necessarily.

Yes, necessarily, if the vote threshold is "majority of those present and voting".

That is one definition of "majority vote" - i.e., more votes that all other [candidates/options] combined.

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(Sun. 26-SEP-2010 6:47 pm - This edit is to confirm that the posting I quoted no longer appears in this thread.)

[David A Foulkes]

To clarify - I had posted a quick reply (somewhat premature) to which Mr. Goldsworthy quote/replied, but not before I deleted my post to rework it. Thus his quote to my seemingly non-existent post.