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Electing a Chair


Guest Cleosmom

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Can a person who is NOT a member of an elected committee serve as Chair of the committee. And if so, would they then have a vote?

Check your bylaws. Nothing in RONR requires that the chair be a member but I think most bylaws do. Or at least most organizations assume that's a requirement.

Only members have the right to vote.

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Can a person who is NOT a member of an elected committee serve as Chair of the committee?

That is nearly impossible.

The party who did the creating and the appointing of Committee X is highly unlikely to specify that Person P shall be chairman of Committee X, and yet not be a sitting member of Committee X.

In theory, it is possible. - But I am betting, dollars to doughnuts, that such is not the case in your case.

(The motion to accomplish this end would be more convoluted than any scenario I could imagine happening in real life.)

Q. How did this come to be? Or, how do you think it would come to be?

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Can a person who is NOT a member of an elected committee serve as Chair of the committee. And if so, would they then have a vote?

I don't think that can happen, if I'm interpreting your question correctly.

If a committee is elected, then only those elected can serve on the committee. The committee doesn't elect itself, so the body which elected the members to the committee get to say who is on the committee, and may name its chairman, or allow the committee to elect one of its members as chairman* by not naming one.

There is no prohibition against naming people to the committee who are not members of the society, so the committee chair does not need to be a member of the society to be a member of the committee. But he would have to be named to the committee, and so would automatically be a member of it.

I can't find any process whereby someone could be named to chair a committee without being named to be on the committee, and therefore a member of it, if that's what you're asking.

__________

* Although RONR [p. 168] does not explicitly state "from among its own number," the surrounding discussion convinces me that that is the intent.

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Perhaps, you could argue that the principle on p. 431, l. 21 - p. 432, l. 8 could apply to a committee, in a special circumstance, if the assembly of the parent body allows it.

But you would be arguing on mighty thin ice. That section applies to officers of the society, not chairmen of committees, and the principle doesn't transfer well.

Page 168 is the place to look for the methods of appointing chairmen, and everything there appears to assume that the chairman will be selected, in one way or another, from among the members of the committee. If the intent were otherwise, then language parallel to that on page 431 would surely have been included on page 168.

Instead, what we see is this:

...the body that elects the committee members has the power, at the time the appointments are made, to designate one of them as chairman. If the chairman is not designated, the committee has the right to elect its own chairman.

Now it is true that the passage does not add "from among its own number," but to assume otherwise is to suggest that the committee has a power that the body that appointed it does not have, viz. to name a chairman who is not "one of them". That's a tough sell, in my view.

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But you would be arguing on mighty thin ice. That section applies to officers of the society, not chairmen of committees, and the principle doesn't transfer well.

Page 168 is the place to look for the methods of appointing chairmen, and everything there appears to assume that the chairman will be selected, in one way or another, from among the members of the committee. If the intent were otherwise, then language parallel to that on page 431 would surely have been included on page 168.

Instead, what we see is this:

Now it is true that the passage does not add "from among its own number," but to assume otherwise is to suggest that the committee has a power that the body that appointed it does not have, viz. to name a chairman who is not "one of them". That's a tough sell, in my view.

When Mountcastle asked for back up, I don't think he meant a punch in the face. I'm doing what I can, here. Start helping.

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