Rules of Order

Excerpts from "Family Foundations and the Law"
Excerpted from Chapter 12 "Robert's Rules of Order - Demystified" with permission

”…Representatives. The work was completed in 1876, at which time General Robert adapted those rules to fit other civic organizations.

Other rule books have been written, but Robert's is still the basic text. Indeed, if your own bylaws or rules don’t stipulate otherwise, it is standard practice, and the law in many states, that Robert's Rules shall be used in the resolution of internal differences.

I’ll begin with the most common parliamentary procedures you are likely to need. Indeed, once you are a third of the way through this chapter, you'll have covered most of what you'll ever need to know and probably more than you want to know.

Starting at the most elementary level, this is the way a group formally makes a decision:

• One of the members will move that a decision be made (this is proposing that the board go on record in favor of a certain definite action).

• Another member of the group will second the motion, which means support for the action proposed. (The second is necessary to be certain that the issue is of interest to more than one person.)

• Once the motion has been made and seconded, there is discussion, clarification, and debate.

• When the subject has been covered fully, there is the vote.

• Prior to both discussion and vote, the person in the chair should restate the motion to be certain everyone knows what is being discussed and decided.

It may strike you as an enormous simplification, but for most committees and boards, that's all you need to know: a motion, second, discussion, and vote.

The next level involves a situation in which the group considers that it might want to make some changes to the motion as originally offered. In the course of the discussion, it may become obvious that the motion doesn't quite say what the board now has in mind.

This is the way that a slightly more complicated scenario would unfold:

• The motion.

• The second.

• The chairperson restates the motion.

• Discussion, clarification, and debate.

• Someone suggests that the original motion be amended, and another person seconds the idea. (At that point it will usually happen that the maker and seconder of the original or main motion will agree to the amendment even though a vote on the amendment has not been taken.

• Technically, once a motion has been made and seconded, it involves the whole assembly, but if no one offers objection to the amendment, no vote is usually taken.)

• If the persons who moved and seconded the original motion do not agree to the amendment or anyone else voices objection, then there is discussion, clarification, and debate on the amendment itself.

• After the group has adequately considered the amendment, the chairperson restates the motion to amend and the group votes on the amendment.

• Once the amendment has been accepted or rejected, the group returns its attention to the original motion.

• If the amendment p.assed, the main motion would now be known as "the original motion as amended."

• If the amendment had been defeated, it would simply be the original motion.

• Debate would proceed on the original motion. It could be amended, ag~in, in which case it would be the new amendment that gets the informal or formal consideration.

• When the amendments have been disposed of, the board votes on the original motion (as amended, if that's the case). Although that is slightly more complicated, it is simply the group's way of deciding whether the original motion needed some changes before it reflected the combined view of what should be done.

• If the main motion is defeated, the same basic proposal cannot be brought forward again at the same meeting. That's to keep the losers from filibustering by bringing the same motion up again and again

  (There is an exception. If one person who was on the winning side of the vote realizes that he or she may have made a mistake, such as misunderstanding what the motion called for, he or she can move for reconsideration, at which point the board decides whether to allow reconsideration.)

  If you serve on a fairly informal board or committee that rarely gets involved in parliamentary procedure, don't bother with the rest of this chapter. For those who participate in more involved board deliberations, including debates, there are some additional points worth knowing.

  1) As obvious as it may be, it is important to know that if a motion is made and not seconded, the motion is automatically lost, and nothing further should be said about it. If there isn't a second, it means that the subject is not something the group..."' '