re recording votes

[Terry Allen <tallen@sonic.net>]

Jon wrote:
| True.  Once again the basic idea emerged intact from the mists of
| a misspent youth, but all the details were wrong.  I was
| conflating "Division of the Assembly" and "Yeas & Nays."
| 
| You are right that any member can call for a Division, which
| simply means that any member can demand an accurate count.  But
| putting names on the record requires a separate vote of the
| assembly; it is *not* the default.  I have finally found the
| relevant passage in the current edition (pp. 412-13):
| 
|    ROLL CALL VOTE. Taking a vote by roll call (or by yeas and
|    nays, as it is also called) has the effect of placing on the
|    record how each member or, sometimes, each delegation, votes;
|    therefore, it has exactly the opposite effect of a ballot vote.
|    It is usually confined to representative bodies, where the
|    proceedings are published, since it enables constituents to
|    know how their representatives voted on certain measures.  It
|    should not be used in a mass meeting or in any assembly whose
|    members are not responsible to a constituency....
| 
|    In the absence of ... a special rule, a majority vote is
|    required to order the taking of a vote by roll call -- in which
|    case a motion to do so is likely to be useless, since its
|    purpose is to force the majority to go on record.  In local
|    societies having a large membership but relatively small
|    attendance at meetings, a motion to take a vote by roll call is
|    generally dilatory....  A roll call vote cannot be ordered in
|    committee of the whole.
| 
| | I agree with the conclusion, but not with the assertion that a
| | "phone poll" isn't a roll call.
| 
| A phone poll is not a "roll call" if by that term you mean (as
| Robert's does) something that puts the identity of the voters on the
| record.  Putting people's names on the record is something that the
| assembly specifically has to approve in a resolution separate from the
| vote itself.

I think we may be talking past each other a bit.  R doesn't have
any provision for a phone poll; we can make one, and indeed we must
if we don't want to take a roll call (which we all agree we don't).
But until we do so, we aren't grounded in R.  

As R says, p 279:  "In practice, the method
of taking a vote usually can be agreed upon informally," let's do
so AND record the method we choose for inclusion in the prospect
committee handbook.

| It might help prevent confusion to use the term "poll" to refer to the
| device whereby we secure the knowledge that we would obtain visually
| by a show of hands in a face-to-face meeting and use the term "yeas
| and nays" to refer to the separate procedure that puts the name
| associated with each vote on the record.

The term "poll" already has a technical meaning in R, so I would
have to oppose applying a different meaning to it.  We don't have
to map our formal procedure to any of the methods in R (it would
be an "unusual voting method", p 278, "such as the use of black
and white balls", which would be much more fun), although I appreciate
your interest in situating it in a continuum of less- to more-formal
procedures.

Debbie wrote:
| If I assume that our voting style is synonymous with Robert's "a count has
| been ordered"*, then we do not need names on the voting results.  Since Jon
| as Chair seems by the rules to be prohibited from asking for said names,
| this is good.
| 
| SO, we take the names off the votes and just publihs counts.
| 
| Any other changes, corrections?
| 
| --Debbie
| 
| *For those who really care, there is a slight change in the wording on this
| matter between  Robert's 1915 and Robert's 9th Edition.

I don't think it is, but I agree you should delete the names; we can
figure out just what we're doing later.  Could you give a reference
to R?

regards, Terry