When Should You Close Nominations For an Election?

Well, if you are the presiding officer, and someone nominates you for a particular office, you probably shouldn’t close nominations before anyone else has a chance to nominate another candidate. Kind of makes sense, right?

Not to everyone:

In January at the first meeting of the year, [Stacey Mounce] Arnold presided over the board’s election of officers as outlined in the board’s operating procedures since she had served as the board chair during the previous year.

Arnold opened the floor to nominations for the position of board chair, board member Gary Shurson nominated Arnold, and Arnold closed the floor to nominations and called for a vote.

That action by Arnold prompted a point of order objection from Hazelton, who challenged her that the vote was not being run correctly. Hazelton argued at the time that the proper procedure was for Arnold to accept any further nominations from the floor that existed for the position and then, once there were no more nominations, vote on them one at a time in the order they were received.

No, Arnold told Hazelton, that is not the way that elections are held for the executive committee. Over Hazelton’s continued objection, Arnold proceeded to call the question for the vote and received the position by a majority vote of the school board.

But a review of procedures prior to Arnold running the elections, and a review of Robert’s Rules of Order, indicate that Hazelton may have been correct.

…

Roberts Rules of Order are clear on the matter of elections for officers on regularly meeting boards. A board can gather nominations in a variety of ways, with some generating them through a special nomination committee and others simply opening the floor to them. But even after a recommendation or single nomination has been received, the chair must invite any additional nominations from the governing body. Robert’s Rules state, “Any member may now rise and, after addressing the chair, nominate anyone else for any office, or he may nominate one person for each office, thus proposing a new ticket. The chair announces the nominations as made, and when he thinks that no more names will be proposed, he asks, ‘Are there any more nominations?’”

Most of parliamentary procedure is about common sense and common courtesy. In an election, other candidates have a right to have their name put forward before the assembly puts the election to a vote.

This really isn’t that complicated.