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[digger]

Robert's Rules & voting

This is a new one on me -- I've tried a few online resources and found conflicting results. Looking for some sort of way to parse this out.

Scenario: Department meeting, quorum is met. To make it easy, lets say ten are in attendance. Vote one passes by majority, seven to three. Vote two is four in favor, two against, four abstain. While the yes votes outnumber the no votes, they don't reflect the majority of the group. Did the item pass?

[ursula]

I would think so.

[systeme_d_]

In the case you describe, with the numbers you provide, both motions passed.

If the second motion was a regular motion, then the majority vote was attained in the instance you described.  Abstentions are not counted.  If it was a Previous Notice motion, which requires a 2/3 vote for adoption, it still passed.  Again, abstentions are not counted.

[brixton]

Chime -- reason why showing up for tedious dept meetings is wise.

[prytania3]

Yes, you aren't sitting on a jury for a criminal trial.

[cgfunmathguy]

I believe Systeme_d' explained it very well.

[obprof]

Abstentions are not supposed to be counted?? We _always_ count them as nos.

What is up with our governance?

[msparticularity]

Abstentions are not supposed to be counted?? We _always_ count them as nos.

What is up with our governance?

Probably your bylaws require that a vote pass by a "majority of those present"--which is pretty common, at least among the nonprofits I've worked with. See the Robert's Rules FAQs Question #6.

And, actually, we don't know from the original description which applied to the OP's situation--if the group in question uses Robert's Rules strictly, or whether the bylaws contain additional language about what constitutes a majority.

[obprof]

Ah, that must be it.

Thanks for pointing me to this website. It's fantastic!