Last updated on March 23, 2024
How do you cram the appointment of Angela McArdle to be Chair of the Convention Oversight Committee through the LNC. You take two motions, falsely state them as one, and call for a vote.
There were originally two motions by Mr. Blankenship:
Given the letter submitted by the Convention Oversight Committee Chair Adrian Malagon this evening, I move to accept the resignation of Adrian Malagon from the position of Convention Oversight Committee Chair.
As that leaves a vacancy, I am calling for sponsors on the following motion:
Move that the LNC appoint Angela McArdle to chair the Convention Oversight Committee.
Angela is the person who bridges the gap between staff and the LNC and is most apt to fill this vacancy given the limited time leading up to the convention. I humbly request sponsors for this motion
End Blankenship motions. There were two of them.
Secretary writes: We have an email ballot. Votes are due to the LNC Business List on this email thread by 11:59 pm Pacific Time on March 29, 2024.
The Secretary merges the two motions, one of which would be impolite to vote against, as
Motion: Move to accept resignation of Adrian Malagon from the Convention Oversight Committee, and the appointment of Angela McArdle as Convention Oversight Committee Chair.
Co-Sponsors: Blankenship, Harlos, McArdle, Watkins
Vote Threshold Required: Majority
Blankenship noticed the issue and posted to the LNC Public List
My apologies,
I intended these to be separate motions and now realize the resignation and appointment are joined. As such, I would like to divide these motions prior to my voting on them if at all possible. Otherwise, I will be voting “no” as I agree (in my opinion) with others that have pointed out that these being joined is in bad form.
Best,
Dustin
Secretary Harlos agreed:
Mr. Blankenship you can raise a Point of Order that the Secretary misunderstood your intention therefore this ballot should be voided and the Secretary instructed to make into two.
The Secretary will not be offended, I have that on good authority.
Blankenship objected
Thank you, I will do that.
I’d like to raise a point of order that the secretary misunderstood the intention of my motion, thus this ballot should be voided and the secretary instructed to make into two.
Thank you!
Dustin
The Secretary said
The Secretary awaits the ruling of the Chair.
McArdle as Chair rejected the point of order
My apologies, but voting has begun and it’s too late to raise this point of order. What I’ll suggest instead is that you leave this motion as is, unvoted upon for now, and someone else make some competing motions. Someone should move to accept the resignation of Mr. Malagon and also ask to open nominations for convention committee chair and to leave those nominations open through Monday. Someone should please nominate me and let’s see if we get any other takers by the end of the COC meeting. As I stated before, I took this up because no one else was able to. If someone else is able, I will be excited.
If this motion is left is as, we can always come back to it if need be. I suggest waiting to see what happens before people vote it down for procedural reasons so that we don’t get left without a COC chair.
To make life more interesting there are now calls for separate votes on the two halves of this motion.
The motion should have been divided and the Chair’s Ruling is incorrect, as points of order can be raised on email votes up to the end of voting.
Unless someone appeals from the ruling of the chair, the proper procedure at this point is to vote down the combined motion and then reintroduce the two separate motions. That’s not dilatory, either, as the separate motions are separate pieces of business and should have been able to have been divided in the first place. It is not dilatory to vote down an improperly-made or badly-formed motion and then come back with the properly-made and better-formed motion to get the process correct.
This should have been asked about before the motion was ever introduced.