Chapter 14

Holding Elections and Making Appointments

In This Chapter

Choosing the best election procedures for your group

Determining the real winners in your elections

Using the best methods for staffing your committees

One of the real challenges for many organizations is making the right decisions when it comes to electing officers and directors and staffing committees. Making mistakes is easy when you don’t know the proper procedures or the rationale behind them. For example, take the myth that when nobody wins on the first ballot, you automatically drop the candidates who received the lowest votes and hold a run-off for the office. Truth is, taking that route instead of following the correct procedure compromises both the election and the group.

This chapter covers the default procedures for elections and appointments, as well as the other options available for selecting leaders, as outlined by Robert’s Rules. If you want to make the best group decisions when selecting your leadership team, take a close look at this chapter and make some comparisons with your current procedures. You’ll clearly see any changes you need to make.

This chapter may look a bit like a rehash of the material in Chapter 8, but it actually goes beyond the basic discussion of voting methods I cover there. The information presented in this chapter further develops the information from Chapter 8, especially as it applies to holding elections and making appointments. In this chapter, I tie the voting basics to the process of arriving at your decisions about who will serve your group in leadership positions.

Conducting Elections Like a Maestro

In my experience, the election process itself is the easiest part of deciding who handles a particular job in the organization. By the time you get to the actual election, the process is mostly (as they say) “all over but the crying.” The choices are pretty well narrowed through the nomination process, and the campaigns, if any, are finished. Now’s the time to see if the members have the wisdom to put the right people to work.

An election is really nothing more than the handling of an assumed motion, with the question being whom to elect to fill a position. As with any incidental main motion, an election can be decided by voice vote or by ballot. You may even make your decisions by plurality or by order of preference instead of by a majority (see Chapter 8 for a full description of the different methods of voting and determining a result).

The point of all these details is that your group has decisions to make about elections before you actually hold an election. If you want to save yourself a lot of angst around election time, you need to decide on these methods ahead of time and make necessary provisions for them in your bylaws.

Electing by ballot

I suspect that most organizations use the method of electing officers and directors by ballot. Ballot voting (see Chapter 8 for details) is by far the surest way to allow for the free expression of the will of the membership. The decision of who you trust to do the work is certainly important enough to justify the extra effort required to ensure each member a right of secrecy and safeguard both the integrity of the count and the result.

When holding ballot elections, you have two procedural options:

Nominations for all offices conclude before any balloting begins.

Nominations for each office are followed by the election for that office.

Each of these two options is unique and has advantages and disadvantages.

Closing nominations for all offices before balloting

Nominations are closed (see Chapter 13) for all offices, and balloting for all offices can take place on the same ballot. The advantages of closing all nominations before any voting takes place are twofold:

It saves time.

It permits polling outside the meeting.

When the meeting is large and time is a real factor in counting ballots, this method works best if you hold your elections early in the meeting. Doing so gives you the best chance of completing any reballoting required in case of a tie between candidates.

One of the disadvantages of this method is that unless voters plan ahead and nominate a member for more than one office before balloting begins (which is certainly permissible), the voters miss the opportunity to elect a candidate to an office voted on later if that person loses an office voted on earlier. When using this procedure, members must be instructed that a person can be nominated for more than one office and can be elected to more than one office — in such a case, that person can then either choose which office he accepts or serve in more than one position, if not prohibited. If your group does elect a nominee to more than one office and he can’t accept or doesn’t choose to accept both positions, you simply conduct another election for the office left empty.

If he’s absent and the rules don’t allow him to serve in both offices, the assembly must decide which of the two offices he will hold and conduct another election for the other.

Closing floor nominations for each office before balloting for that office

The main advantage of this procedure is that members can consider the election results of one office before proceeding to the election of another office.

In this procedure, you take nominations from the floor for one office and, when no further nominations are forthcoming, then proceed to the balloting for that office. Your tellers count the ballots and report the count, and the chair announces the results. Then you do it all again for the next office.

The disadvantage of closing nominations for one office at a time is that it requires more time for the election process, making it probably best limited to smaller groups.

No matter which procedure you use, the order in which you take up each election is the order in which your bylaws list the offices.

When your bylaws provide that elections shall be by ballot, waiving that requirement is never permissible, even if only one person is nominated or running for the office. A rule requiring ballots is a rule protecting the right of an individual to vote in secret, which is considered a fundamental principle of parliamentary law.

Using write-in votes

Voting by ballot adds another dimension to an election: It enables a member to vote for a candidate not formally nominated by writing a name on the ballot and marking the name to indicate that it’s the voter’s choice. Called a write-in vote, this type of vote is always counted. A write-in vote is a legal vote unless it’s unintelligible or cast for an unidentifiable or ineligible person, in which case it’s counted as an illegal vote. (Flip to Chapter 8 for the lowdown on how to count both legal and illegal votes.)

Dropping the low-vote-getter? Not so fast . . .

Although the government runs its elections by dropping all comers except the top two vote-getters, Robert doesn’t sanction that kind of decision making unless you’ve made a bylaw or a special rule of order to allow it. Robert is pretty much a purist with the “majority rules” concept — even with elections.

In other words, without a bylaw that provides for election by plurality or some form of preferential voting, nobody gets elected until she receives a majority. A candidate can’t be forced out of the race just because she’s in last place, as long as a seat remains open and nobody has a majority vote. Needless to say, that means that you’ll sometimes find yourself having to ballot multiple times, with the same result: no winner. It happens.

But few trees are likely lost to the paper used for reballoting. The fact that it’s a real drag to have to keep voting is just the motivation to get voters to rethink their positions and maybe find a low-vote-getter who’s acceptable to a majority when none of the top vote-getters ever will be!

Unless a bylaw provides as much, an assembly may not declare an otherwise qualified candidate to be ineligible to run or receive votes in an election just because she’s a low-vote-getter in a round of balloting.

Adopting a special rule of order (see Chapter 2) or suspending the rules (see Chapter 11) can allow a group to drop a nominee with fewer votes from later ballots. But only a bylaw can make that nominee ineligible for election to the office or prevent members from voting for her in the future rounds of balloting.

Electing by voice vote

If your bylaws don’t require you to conduct an election by ballot, and if candidates are unopposed or there’s no major contest for an office, an election by voice vote (or viva voce) may save you some valuable time. In fact, when there’s only one nominee and you’re not required to elect by ballot, the chair need only announce that the nominee is elected.

The procedure for a voice-vote election is fairly simple. After nominations are closed, the vote is taken on each nominee in the order in which they were nominated.

For example, suppose the nominees for the office of treasurer are Mr. Spender, Ms. Froogle, and Mr. Dazzler. The chair begins by saying, “If there are no more nominations for the office of treasurer, we will close nominations and proceed to elect a treasurer. Are there further nominations? [pause for additional nominations] Hearing no further nominations, nominations for the office of treasurer are closed.”

The chair continues, “The nominees for treasurer are Mr. Spender, Ms. Froogle, and Mr. Dazzler. All those in favor of electing Mr. Spender to the office of treasurer, say, ‘Aye.’ Opposed, ‘No.’ The noes have it, and Mr. Spender is not elected.”

The election’s not over yet — you have two more candidates to consider.

The chair proceeds to the vote on the candidate nominated second. He says, “All those in favor of electing Ms. Froogle to the office of treasurer, say, ‘Aye.’ Opposed, ‘No.’ The ayes have it, and Ms. Froogle is elected to the office of treasurer.”

Now that the assembly has elected the treasurer, the question on the election of Mr. Dazzler has become moot.

The only real problem with the voice vote method is that if the members don’t understand exactly how it works, the ones whose preferred candidate doesn’t get voted on are likely to think something is amiss.

Because this form of voting favors one candidate over another based on the order of nomination, avoid using it except in mass meetings or when there’s no serious contest for the office and a ballot isn’t required.

Depending on the group and your members’ familiarity with the process, your presiding officer can avoid misunderstandings by explaining to the assembly exactly how the voice vote works. In doing so, Madam President may explain, “If you want to be sure someone down the list has a chance at being elected, you should vote against those higher up on the list. Your failure to cast a negative vote for candidates who get voted on before yours can actually help the fortunes of the candidates nominated before yours.”

If a candidate for office is unopposed and your bylaws don’t require a ballot, your presiding officer simply declares the candidate elected.

Electing by roll call

If your assembly’s members are accountable to a constituency, your rules may require you to conduct your elections by roll-call vote. You follow the same procedures I outline for elections by ballot (in the earlier section “Electing by ballot”), as far as arriving at the point of the election is concerned. But instead of casting your vote by ballot, each member announces his vote when the secretary calls that person’s name. The secretary repeats the vote after recording it, to ensure accuracy. I cover roll-call voting in Chapter 8.

Determining who wins

Elections are decided by majority vote unless your bylaws provide differently.

Viva voce elections

As far as elections by voice vote are concerned, a majority elects anyway because all you can discern with a voice vote is win-or-lose, and you stop when you have a winner. Tie votes are unlikely in viva voce elections; if you do encounter a tie, you solve the problem by division of the assembly (see Chapter 11) or even by switching to a counted vote or a ballot vote.

Ballot elections

When it comes to ballot elections, your election isn’t complete until a position is filled — and a position is never filled until a candidate receives the threshold number of votes required for election. In most cases, the threshold is a majority of the votes cast. If you have only two candidates and the vote is a tie, you repeat the balloting until one candidate receives a majority.

Follow the same practice even if more than two candidates are on a ballot for one position. If no one receives a majority, you vote again. See “Dropping the low-vote-getter? Not so fast . . .” earlier in this chapter.

Balloting must continue until a candidate receives a majority. Dropping the candidates who receive the lowest vote totals from a ballot is never proper unless they withdraw voluntarily. Run-offs, then, are just plain out of order. The requirement for election by ballot is a majority, and a candidate has no obligation to withdraw just because he polls low numbers. In fact, your members may wind up voting for Mr. Low as the compromise candidate.

Time to count the ballots

In Chapter 8, I cover in detail how ballots are counted and how voting results are determined. But a couple of points about counting ballots in elections are relevant here:

When you have several seats to fill on a board or a committee, a voter doesn’t have to vote for more than one person for the office in order for the ballot to count. However, a blank ballot doesn’t count at all.

When you’re tallying the votes, if more candidates than the required number of positions to be filled receive a majority, the winners are determined by ranking the total votes received. If some but not all seats are filled on a ballot, the candidates who receive a majority are elected, and you reballot to fill the remaining positions.

Mail ballots

Mail ballots (which your bylaws must authorize) can be a great way to elect leaders of organizations that have a large membership spread over a wide area. But they have one major drawback: When no candidate receives a majority, the price of reballoting can really bust the budget! Take a look in Chapter 8 for details about conducting a vote by mail.

To make sure you don’t have to reballot when holding an election by mail, authorize in your bylaws that mail ballot elections can be decided by plurality or preferential voting. (I cover both of these methods in Chapter 8.)

Contesting an election

When it comes to determining election results — well, you know about the hanging chads of the infamous 2000 U.S. presidential election. Rules for contesting elections are something this country is all about. All that counts is how you handle the challenge. Robert’s Rules has just the answer: more rules! It’s a good thing, too. When you have an election to challenge, it’s good not to have to decide at that point on the rules for challenging it.

Ordering a recount

Sometimes the solution is easy. If the election just took place and members are still in their seats, you can resolve any question about the actual vote count by ordering a while-you-wait recount. Everything else pretty much gets put on hold when that happens. It’s okay — now is the best time to stop and be sure.

If you can’t resolve the count issue with a recount, you’re probably still okay to retake the vote using another method (unless you’ve gone on to the next item on your agenda and are involved in that). You’ll want to follow the rules I cover under “Retaking the vote by another method” in Chapter 8.

Challenging by raising a point of order

The way to challenge elections your organization has held generally adheres to procedures for raising pints of ardor — or, rather, points of order (I prefer the former but can discuss only the latter here).

Usually, you have to catch the error when it happens — and speak up right away — if it is to make a difference in the outcome. But in a few cases, you can make the challenge anytime, and it has to be dealt with then — whenever it is! Those circumstances are as follows:

The individual who was elected doesn’t meet qualifications for office. Just ask President Myrtle what happened when she forgot to pay her dues and her membership lapsed. She then wasn’t a member anymore, so according to the bylaws, she wasn’t entitled to serve in any office — certainly not as the president. The vice president automatically become the president and didn’t even know it! Myrtle never forgot to pay her dues again. But it didn’t matter, because she never got elected to anything again, either.

You already conducted a valid election for the same term. Believe it or not, if you revote something against the rules, that result probably isn’t valid. In this case, whatever you did in the first place still stands.

The votes of nonmembers or absentees affect the result. Whether it’s zombies in New Orleans voting for years after they died or just the folks who live in St. Tammany parish voting in St. Bernard parish, if the result changes when you eliminate ineligible votes, the election outcome changes.

An election took place to fill a vacancy without proper notice. Everybody remembers the story that went something like, “Hey, let’s elect Figero before Alexander and Cicero figure out what we’re doing.”

Disenfranchisement of members changes the result. All it takes for this situation to happen is for the treasurer to have an incorrect membership list and find out later that eligible people weren’t allowed to vote. Guess what! It’s probably not too late to fix it.

Making it final

Elections are a big deal. But going on and on arguing about who won keeps the real work from getting done. At some point, the body doing the electing has to elect somebody who can serve so that everybody can go home. If the assembly doesn’t want to have to deal with the problem itself, it can refer the decision to a subordinate body with authority to make the final determination.

But unless the bylaws or special rules of order or direct authority from the assembly expressly grant the subordinate body the power to act for the superior body in its elections, none but the electing body can make it final. Finally!

Dealing with incomplete elections

Despite the best of plans, sometimes your group just can’t finish its order of business in a given meeting or session. If you run out of time before you’ve elected all the positions you plan to fill, don’t worry. It’s not the end of the world — just the end of the meeting! And meetings being what they are, you can be sure you’ll have another one. With that in mind, if you expect that you’re not going to finish your work, you need to provide for an adjourned meeting in which to conclude your election. (I tell you how to do this in Chapter 10.) However, if your next regular meeting is scheduled within a quarterly time period (see Appendix A) and you’re able to wait, you can also finish your election at the next regular meeting.

If you’re wondering who your officers are either after an election or during an incomplete election, keep the following points in mind:

Elections are final immediately upon their conclusion unless the elected person isn’t present and hasn’t consented to serve, or unless the elected person declines to serve when notified of the election, whether present at the time of election or not.

An election can’t be reconsidered after it’s finalized.

The newly elected officer assumes office immediately unless the bylaws state a specific time for the term of office to commence.

If the bylaws require an installation ceremony, failure to conduct the ceremony doesn’t affect the time at which the term commences, nor does it prohibit the candidate from assuming the office.

Filling Vacancies

Just when you think you have everything under control, somebody quits or dies, or you have to throw someone out. It’s not that big a deal to have to fill a vacancy if you’ve just had all that fun throwing out dead weight; that’s just the next item of business on your meeting agenda. But unless your group has authorized a subordinate board to fill vacancies in the positions that your big assembly normally elects once every year or two at the big event in the big city, your board can’t fill the vacancy. To fill that vacancy, you have to go through the election procedure all over again.

Fortunately, Robert’s Rules and common sense allow that if you want your executive board to fill vacancies in office between big meetings, you can set it up that way. All you have to do is write a bylaw, enact a special rule of order, or even just adopt a motion at the close of the meeting to refer the decision to your board or a committee. For more on filling vacancies, see Chapter 15.

Making Committee Appointments

In Chapter 16, I cover committees and the considerations necessary to staff them properly. Those considerations relate to the nature of the committee, its task, the size of committee necessary to handle the task, and the members’ abilities and temperaments. In this section, I branch out to explain the procedures for committee selection. (You may find it helpful to read this section in conjunction with Chapter 16.)

Exploring the methods of appointing committees

The two most common methods of selecting committee members are

Appointment by motion

Appointment by the chair

Appointment by motion

This method is pretty self-explanatory: The suggested appointees are simply named in a motion.

In many cases, the motion is the same as the motion establishing the committee. For example, a member may say, “Mr. Chairman, I move that we refer the pending motion to contract out the landscaping of our main entrance to a committee of three members to seek bids and to review and recommend to the membership at our regular meeting in two months, and that the members of the committee be Hector Knuckles, Shirley Buckles, and Luther Chuckles.”

You can instead make the appointment in a second motion that follows the committee’s establishment. In this case, a member may say, “Mr. Chairman, I move that Hector Knuckles, Shirley Buckles, and Luther Chuckles be appointed as the landscape proposal bid review committee just established.”

Members may want to add other names for consideration for appointment to a special committee with a fixed number of members; those names are taken as nominations, and the motion is treated in the same way that nominations and an election are held. (Turn to Chapter 13 for details on handling nominations from the floor.) Alternatively, while you’re still in the meeting, you can adopt a motion to reconsider the motion establishing the committee (see Chapter 12) and change the number of members to serve on the committee.

The motion to appoint specific members to the committee may also name a chairman for the committee. If a chairman isn’t determined in this manner, a separate motion can appoint the chairman, or the motion can authorize the committee members to select their chairman from among themselves. If no chairman is named and no provision is made for selecting the chairman, the first person named to the committee calls the committee together and serves as a temporary chairman until the committee elects its chairman.

Direct appointment by the chair

Many organizations allow the chair or president to appoint committees. In fact, a group’s bylaws may make the appointment of all committees an express responsibility of the president. In those cases, members don’t have any power over the appointment of committee members; they can only hope that the president heeds their recommendations.

If the bylaws don’t state that the president shall appoint all special and standing committees, the group can charge the presiding officer with the task in two ways. One way is to add the task to the motion creating the committee, as in, “I move to create a committee of five members to be appointed by the president, to gather information about a new place to hold our meetings and to report back to us next month.” This method delegates any authority to select the committee members directly to the president.

The other way to give the president the authority to appoint members to a committee is to make a separate motion following the adoption of the motion establishing the committee. The member taking this approach then says, “Mr. Chairman, I move that the members of the meeting location committee just established be appointed by the chair.”

Finding more ways to appoint committee members

When it’s time to appoint members to committees, you have four methods to choose from, in addition to the ones described in the previous section. Although these methods aren’t used nearly as often as the others, they are nonetheless available and sometimes are established in bylaws or special rules of order as a particular method to use for certain committees. These methods are listed here:

Ballot election

Open nominations

Nominations by the chair

Appointment by definition in bylaws

Ballot election

Ballot election is the procedure most often used to staff important standing committees that have great power and authority. Whenever a group wants members to select the appointees and wants to afford members the benefit of the secret ballot, ballot election is the way to go. I cover the procedure in the section titled “Electing by ballot,” earlier in this chapter.

Open nominations

Selecting members of a committee by open nominations is a procedure in which the presiding officer takes nominations from the floor (see Chapter 13) for potential committee members. This method gives control over appointment to the membership but doesn’t carry the requirement of a secret ballot.

If the number of members nominated is no greater than the number of committee members to be appointed, the nominees can be declared appointed. Otherwise, the chairman calls for a voice vote on each nominee in the order nominated until the required number is elected. You can find more information on this kind of voting in the section “Electing by voice vote,” earlier in this chapter.

Nominations by the chair

Using this procedure, you can take advantage of the chair’s knowledge of the strengths and capabilities of members as they relate to the requirements of service on the committee, but you ultimately reserve the final decision for your group.

The chair offers her nominees and puts the question as follows: “The chair nominates Hoss Traynor as chairman, and Ben Dare and Don Daat as members. Shall these members comprise the committee?”

You can propose a veto of any member nominated by moving to strike out one or more of those named. Your chair handles such a motion as a subsidiary motion to Amend (see Chapter 9). But when appointing committees by nominations from the chair, you can’t offer a replacement. Instead, the membership votes on your motion to strike out. If it passes, the chair offers other nominees. If it fails, the question is again raised on whether to approve the chair’s nominees as members of the committee.

Appointment by definition in the bylaws

Some committees are appointed as directed under specific provisions of bylaws. (I cover bylaws in Chapter 2.)

An executive committee, for example, must be specifically authorized in the bylaws and is usually defined by the express enumeration of officers who will comprise the committee. Consider a bylaw that reads, “An executive committee, consisting of the president, the vice president, the secretary, and the treasurer, shall have all the authority of the board between its meetings.”

Another example is a standing committee appointed under the bylaws by a combination of several of the methods listed in this section. The bylaw for such a committee may read, “The finance committee membership shall consist of the treasurer, the chairman of the audit committee, the chairman of the budget committee, the executive director, two members appointed by the president, and three members elected by the membership at the annual meeting.”