Membership rules

[Guest Ivan]

The bylaws of our Association require new membership applications go through the county chapter prior to being sent to the state chapter. In practice, the state and national chapters routinely receive membership applications FIRST, then send the information to the county chapters. The memberships have never been challenged until now.

Question: Should members whose applications were received outside the rules be ineligible to vote in elections for county officers and state convention delegates?

[hmtcastle]

Should members whose applications were received outside the rules be ineligible to vote in elections for county officers and state convention delegates?

All you have to do if determine whether a person is a member or not. If he is, he can vote. If he isn't he can't.

[Gary Novosielski]

The bylaws of our Association require new membership applications go through the county chapter prior to being sent to the state chapter. In practice, the state and national chapters routinely receive membership applications FIRST, then send the information to the county chapters. The memberships have never been challenged until now.

Question: Should members whose applications were received outside the rules be ineligible to vote in elections for county officers and state convention delegates?

You referred to them as "members" which implies they are eligible to vote. It's not possible to tell, without reading the actual language of the bylaws in their entirety whether, and by whom, any rules were violated. Paraphrases are certainly not sufficient.

It's entirely possible that something terrible has gone on.

It's also possible that your local rules require you to funnel applications upward through the county, but that if someone applies to the national, their procedure is to forward it downward. I know of organizations that do just that. Do you think that they should throw them away?

But I can't speculate on what your bylaws mean. RONR just says members vote.