Have question about making motions online

[Guest Kathy]

Hello. I am the secretary of a local professional association. We have board meetings approximately 4 times per year and we have intermittent phone meetings. We discuss issues back and forth by email all the time.

Something has come up that I need an answer on. While discussing a topic by email, our past president, in her email, made a motion to do a particular thing. Another board member, by email, seconded her motion. I have expressed an opinion that this is not proper and motions should be made at some regularly scheduled meeting wherein the motion and voting can be memorialized in the minutes book. Is there anything in RROO that pertain to if motions can only be made during a meeting or can they be made anytime?

Thanks for your help.

[Gary Novosielski]

Hello. I am the secretary of a local professional association. We have board meetings approximately 4 times per year and we have intermittent phone meetings. We discuss issues back and forth by email all the time.

Something has come up that I need an answer on. While discussing a topic by email, our past president, in her email, made a motion to do a particular thing. Another board member, by email, seconded her motion. I have expressed an opinion that this is not proper and motions should be made at some regularly scheduled meeting wherein the motion and voting can be memorialized in the minutes book. Is there anything in RROO that pertain to if motions can only be made during a meeting or can they be made anytime?

Thanks for your help.

Yes, RONR is quite explicit. Motions can only be made in the context of a properly called meeting at which a quorum is present.

[Kim Goldsworthy]

Is there anything in RROO that pertain to if motions can only be made during a meeting or can they be made anytime?

Yes, The Book is clear.

Voting by ANY absentee method (where there is no quorum physically present in one meeting area), which includes e-mail, violates a fundamental principle of parliamentary law.

All such voting is null and void.

That's The Book.

[Guest Kathy]

Can you point me to a page number or section or some way to reference it? And thanks for your answers.

[Kim Goldsworthy]

Can you point me to a page number or section or some way to reference it?

See page 255:

Rules which embody fundamental principles of parlia-

mentary law, such as the rule that allows only one question

to be considered at a time (p. 56), cannot be suspended. As

a further example, since it is a fundamental principle of par-

liamentary law that the right to vote is limited to the mem-

bers of an organization who are actually present at the time

the vote is taken in a legal meeting (p. 408), the rules can-

not be suspended so as to give the right to vote to a non-

member,* or to authorize absentee (pp. 408-409) or

cumulative (p. 429) voting, even by a unanimous vote.