Re: Recording votes

[Terry Allen <tallen@sonic.net>]

Jon wrote:
| At the last PAC meeting it was asserted that names needed to be
| recorded in votes.  I demurred but couldn't quote chapter and verse,
| so I agreed to research it.
| 
| I am pleased to report that I appear to have gotten this right.
| RROR 9th edition (with which I am becoming increasingly irritated)
| states on pp. 43-52 the procedure for voting with such
| excruciating verbosity that I cannot quote it here, but the 1915
| edition (p. 189) gets smartly to the point in question:
| 
|    The responsibility of announcing, or declaring, the vote rests
|    upon the chair, and he, therefore, has the right to have the
|    vote taken again, by rising, if he is in doubt as to the
|    result, and even to have the vote counted, if necessary.  He
|    cannot have the vote taken by ballot or by yeas and nays (roll
|    call) unless it is required by the rules or by a vote of the
|    assembly.
| 
| In other words, the recording of names in votes is not only 
| unnecessary, it is prohibited unless the group votes to have the
| names recorded (by adopting a Division of the Assembly).

However, this procedure works only in person, or if no one votes
no, as on the phone you can't "count".

So, on the phone, when the chair asks if no one objects and no one 
answers, we're cool.  How do we manage a phone vote if the committee is
divided?  Perhaps we need to adopt a rule requiring a ballot (role
call) without requiring names to be recorded.

regards, Terry