Counting Votes

We had some fun on Tuesday night. I've been scouring the Board's policies and brushing up on Robert's Rules of Order since earlier this month. I found that in one case, the Board's practice has been out of alignment with it's policies, and that is how the Chairman counts the votes. You might think that this is a small thing. You would be wrong.

The Board's policy 2-24 (Order of Business, Quorum, Rules, Voting) reads in part:

All voting on motions or resolutions shall be by voice vote, except that upon the demand of any member or at the discretion of the Chairman, the Chairman shall direct a roll call vote and the "ayes" and "nayes" shall be recorded.

So according to our policy, there is no counting, announcing or recording of individual members' votes by default. Nevertheless the counting of every vote has been the Board's practice since before any of the current members began their service. So I sent everyone a note last weekend saying "hey, I just noticed that this is our policy; unless you object I'll follow it." I got one note of objection, and otherwise concurrence or silence.

So on Tuesday night, we gave it a try, got a couple of objections and a couple of people quietly saying "maybe that's not the way we want to do it after all." That's fine. There are several perfectly good reasons to count and announce the votes, most importantly accountability to the public. As a result, I believe we're on our way to changing the Board's policy to match its practice, which is how it should be.

As I said on Tuesday night, sometimes the best motivation to change our policies is to follow them for a while.