Re: Recording votes

[Terry Allen <tallen@sonic.net>]

Further to the question ...

| 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:

Art 30, "Motions Relating to Methods of Voting and the Polls",
which is pp 278-80 in the 9th ed, is more concise (omitting
instructions to the chair to be sure to project his voice, for
example ...).  I should have read it earlier.

|    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.

Art 30:  "The purpose of these motions is to obtain a vote on
a question in some form other than by voice or Division
(rising) or to close or reopen the polls.  These motions include
those that the vote be taken by ballot [secret vote - TA], by
roll call (the yeas and nays), and that a standing vote be
counted (tellers).

| 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).

According to Art 29, "Division of the Assembly", division doesn't
involve recording names.  But again, it's a visual procedure.

| My reading of Robert's on voting is that what matters is whether
| something passes, not by how much or by whom (unless the members vote
| to record a roll call).  The process described in Robert's is one in
| which the chair goes only so far as needed to establish whether there
| is a majority: first by viva voce, and if that doesn't work then by a
| show of hands or by standing, and if that doesn't work then by
| splitting up the room and appointing tellers.  In phone conferences we
| have no choice but to poll the members, but it seems to me that this
| is a logical extension of the escalation needed to determine the
| existence of majority, not a device for putting names on record.

Agreed, except that "poll the members" doesn't appear to be a R
term.  In R, polls are for casting written ballots.  We can't do
yeas and nays on the phone, so we have to either do a roll call
or something informally similar (p 279:  "In practice, the method
of taking a vote usually can be agreed upon informally.")

| The point of having a separate motion for a Division of the Assembly
| is that putting names on record is something that the assembly has to
| decide to do as something over and above deciding the issue being
| voted on.

The point is rather that someone objects to the chair's decision after
a less formal method (not that it matters at all for phone votes);
a Division *doesn't* involve recording names.

| | 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.

I was wrong to conflate ballot and roll call.

| My reading is that what we've been doing is not a ballot or a roll
| call but rather a device necessitated by the medium for
| determining the existence of a majority.  The information that we
| gain as members by listening to a phone poll is exactly what we
| could establish visually by looking at a show of hands if we were
| meeting in person.  So in my opinion, the fact that we know who
| voted on which side of a question should no more affect whether
| the names are recorded in the minutes of a phone conference than
| it would in a face-to-face meeting.

I agree with the conclusion, but not with the assertion that a
"phone poll" isn't a roll call.  It is, but as you remark it
isn't done for the usual purpose of a roll call - unless we
agree informally or adopt a rule that it isn't a roll call.

We seem to have three stages, all of which seem to be okay:

1.  The chair states the motion and asks if there are any 
	members opposed (this doesn't establish that there was
	a majority in favor, but if no one objects, no problem).

2.  If there are members opposed, the chair needs to establish
	whether there are more in favor.

3.  If it's close, we need to do a roll call, not because we
	want to place on the record who voted which way, but
	because we cannot use visual methods over the phone.
	Per pp 412 and 460-61, the results of a roll call,
	by name, are supposed to be entered in the minutes.

	! But we could agree, formally or informally, that they 
	need not be, on the ground that we're using the roll call
	to adapt R to the telephone, or that it's not really
	a roll call

I think we're doing okay, but we ought to be able to describe
what it is we're doing okay in terms of R and our committee
rules (or agreements).

regards, Terry