PARLIAMENTARY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

QUESTION 1:  The bylaws of the society do not provide for a method of voting during an election and a motion is made to require the voting by ballot, is this a main motion?

ANSWER:  “Where there is no determining rule, a motion to fix the method of voting (or any other detail of a nomination or election procedure) is an incidental main motion if made before the election is pending or it is an incidental motion if made while the election is pending. p. 424, l. 19-24. An incidental main motion is a main motion that is incidental to or relates to the business of the assembly, or its past or future action. 2) It does not mark the beginning of a particular involvement of the assembly in a substantive matter, as an original main motion does. It can be made only when nothing is pending and it brings business before the assembly. p. 96, l. 7-9, l 19-23. Incidental motions relate, in different ways, to the pending business or to business otherwise at hand–some of them with varying degrees of resemblance to subsidiary motion, ... p. 66 l. 14-17. An incidental motion is said to be incidental to the other motion or matter out of which it arises. With but few exceptions, incidental motions are related to the main question in such a way that they must be decided immediately, before business can proceed. Most incidental motions are undebatable. p. 66, l. 29-30, p. 67, l. 1-4.

QUESTION 2:  The ballots for an election contained the instructions that a checkmark was to be placed in the box following the candidate of your choice. A number of members placed an X in the box and the tellers counted those as illegal votes. Was this correct?

ANSWER:  No. It may indicate that the voters cannot or did not read, but that does not affect the validity of the vote. “Small technical errors, like the misspelling of a word or name, or in this case using X instead of a checkmark, do not make a vote illegal if the meaning of the ballot is clear.” P. 402, l.12-14.

QUESTION 3:  Does the presiding officer of a meeting or convention have the authority to insert in the minutes anything that was not said or read during the convention?

 ANSWER: No. Neither the president nor any one else has a right to insert in the minutes a false statement, and it certainly is a false statement to say that certain things were said or done that were not said or done. But this does not necessarily prevent the committee in charge of compiling and publishing the proceedings of a convention from including matter that did not come before the convention. In doing so, however, they run the risk of a vote of censure at the next meeting of the convention if anything is inserted that is disapproved by the convention. Parliamentary Law, Q. 256, p. 501.