[EM] Comments re Robert's Rules of Order

[Abd ulRahman Lomax]

At 09:58 PM 8/2/2005, RLSuter at aol.com wrote:

> >There is an assumption here, which is that there is no chair who
> >understands the rules and considers it his or her duty to help
> >members to use the rules to get what they want.
>
>I made no such assumption. In fact, one of the things Cannon
>emphasizes in his much more concise rules is the imporance
>of a good chair.

I don't think Mr. Suter has understood what I wrote. I was responding to:

>When meeting rules become as extensive as the
> >>latest version of Robert's Rules, they benefit people who have
> >>the time and patience to learn their details and harm people
> >>who don't.

This is true if

(1) there is no chair who knows the rules and acts to help members to do 
what they want to do. (That is, to follow the correct procedure; for 
example, if a member were to rise and say "I think we have talked about 
this too long," the chair might say, "Shall I take this to mean that you 
are moving the Previous Question, so that we will then proceed to a vote?" 
If the chair does not act affirmatively to help members, if, with a comment 
like this, the chair just sits there and then perhaps recognizes someone 
else, yes, the member would have been injured by not knowing the rules.

And (2) If there is no chair who is doing this, it still can be enough if 
there is anyone there who does it. This does not *have* to be a member of 
the same faction as the ignorant member, but it can help if it is, and, 
here, by "faction" I simply mean that the helper and the member agree on 
the immediate issue. Which in the example I gave could result in the other 
member taking the hint from the first one and then directly moving the 
Previous Question.

My point is that only a few people knowing the rules and caring about 
democratic process rather than just about manipulating the rules in order 
to win can be enough. And I've seen this work beautifully with groups that 
mostly didn't know the rules at all, except for the few. Yes, that does 
theoretically put those "few" in an increased position of power, which they 
could potentially abuse. But with some experience, the rules make more 
sense and are easier to learn.

>The rest of your comments basically say that the rules will work
>fine if properly understood and applied by the chair and by all
>"factions" at a meeting.

No. The chair is enough. The bit about other factions is an additional 
possibility: a few members knowing about the rules and applying them for 
the benefit of helping the group to make truly democratic decisions is 
enough. They do not have to come from all factions. It is really enough if 
there is *one* person who will advise members. I've seen organizations 
designate someone for that purpose.

>  But a big problem is that they often
>are not well understood, and one reason they aren't is that they
>are unnecessarily and intimidatingly detailed and complicated.

They are detailed and complicate when taken all at once. But it is 
perfectly acceptable for a meeting to adopt the full rules and then suggest 
one of the popular summaries for the general member. The vast majority of 
situations will fall within the simple rules.

>Furthermore, when strongly competing factions exist, it is very
>common for one to have a better understanding of the rules than
>the other(s) (or for one to to have one or a few people who
>understand them much better than anyone in the other faction(s)).
>This happens all the time in the real world, as opposed to the
>ideal world you seem to be writing about.

I've substantial experience with the rules, but I will say that it has been 
in organizations which, though sometimes quite fractious, were not 
"strongly competing." Rather, the members generally did share a goal.

The question was about "small group methods." Not about vicious opponents 
struggling for control of, say, a rough-and-tumble union.

>  It is also very common
>for people and factions who understand the rules better to use
>their command of the rules to get favored motions passed and
>defeat ones they don't like.

It only takes a small few of the oppressed factions to wake up for this to 
backfire, or at least to become pretty difficult. Of course, if the 
majority of the members aren't paying attention, if they can be snookered 
by the faction with a command of the rules, sure. But the problem there is 
not the rules, it is the simple one that people who are asleep can easily 
be robbed, unless at least some of them are trustworthy and vigilant, and 
the rest trust the vigilant ones.

>In addition, I believe some of the rules are just wrong. The worst one
>is the rule that a motion to end debate cannot itself be debated.

Ah. You believe that. I don't. I won't even bother to explain why, it is so 
obvious. If, however, an organization decides that this rule is not good, 
Robert's Rules actually recommends that organizations amend the rules as 
they see fit.

Yes, Previous Question can be abused. But typically it takes a 
supermajority to pass, by default, as I recall the rules.

>  That
>rule, perhaps more than any other, is used strategically by people
>who are more interested in getting their way than in ensuring that
>a meeting is conducted democratically.

If two-thirds of the people at a meeting don't want debate to continue, 
then I'd say that it is undemocratic to allow it to continue. Sure, it can 
be foolish to move Previous Question when there is unexpressed relevant 
opinion. But this boils down to the fact that, in a democracy, the people 
can make foolish decisions.

>  In one meeting I participated
>in where an organization was doing a major revision of its constitution
>and bylaws, the use of that rule abruptly ended discussion of a
>proposal that would have changed an important aspect of the
>organization and might have greatly strengthened it.

By what vote did the Previous Question pass?

Here is what I say: if you have a contentious environment, you'd better 
have your ducks in a row *before* the meeting, or you can get creamed. 
"Discussion of a proposal" does not have to happen in meetings. You could 
send a letter to every member, for example. Or write a discussion of your 
reasons for making the proposal and hand it out. Previous Question can't 
stop you from communicating directly with members, it just deprives you of 
the floor on that particular matter.

>  The provision
>deserved more debate than most of the other provisions that were
>discussed, yet because people at the meeting wanted to get
>finished, it was rejected after a very short and inadequate debate,
>following one argument against it that I felt was extremely unfair
>(though superficially persuasive) but that was not permitted to be
>answered, thanks to the use of one Robert's rule that I happen to
>think needs to be fundamentally changed.

What, exactly, would you suggest as an alternative?

Previous Question is actually a crucial rule, and without it, or where 
members of a meeting don't know to use it, abuses far more serious than 
what was reported above can happen. In particular, fanatic factions can 
draw out debate endlessly until enough people leave the meeting -- people 
have a life! -- that the faction can get its way.

Now, consensus organizations don't have this kind of problem, though they 
do often have the endless meeting problem. There *are* possible rules that 
modify Previous Question, but the details of them would vary greatly with 
the kind of meeting. If not every member of the meeting has risen to speak 
on an important motion, and one who has not spoken wants to speak, a 
meeting really should allow it. This really should be the *custom*. It 
can't be a rule, but if you can get two-thirds of the organization to be so 
rude as to not allow everyone to say something who wants to, then, yes, the 
results are not going to be satisfactory to those who think something was 
missing. Suppose, however, that two-thirds of the meeting thinks that the 
matter has long been resolved, and, as described above, really wants to 
move on. Should the one-third be able to force them to listen to more? 
*That's ALSO rude!*

With something like bylaw revisions, I'd really have suggested written 
proposals and arguments, preferably distributed in advance of the meeting. 
And I'd suggest that "factions" (i.e., those who agree on a particular 
proposal) coordinate their activites, so that the best speakers speak and 
so that all the necessary arguments are clearly presented.

This case was *not*, as stated, an example of a faction cynically using 
Previous Question to get what they wanted. Rather it was the assembly 
making a decision that the writer did not agree with. Whether the writer 
was correct or not about the wisdom of closing debate, it seems that the 
writer would not allow the assembly the right to make that decision, but 
perhaps would have a rule that forces the assembly to allow debate to 
continue. And that's not democratic! Robert's Rules actually deviates from 
pure democracy by requiring a supermajority, but experience has shown that 
(1) supermajority is necessary until and unless people come to 
instinctively value full expression and (2) there is little harm done by 
requiring supermajority.

>You totally ignored a possibility I was trying to express -- that
>there may be alternatives to Robert's Rules that would work better
>and result in more democratic meetings and decisions in most
>if not all situations. I believe there are. But they won't be discovered
>through debates about Robert's Rules. They will be discovered
>by open-minded and open-ended as well as thoughtful and
>well-informed experimentation with different kinds of meeting
>rules and decisionmaking processes. Such experimentation
>will have to be conducted by people who, unlike yourself, are
>willing to at least seriously consider that there may be better
>ways to conduct meetings.

This is utter hogwash. About me, that is. I've a great deal of experience 
with alternative rules. I'm just claiming that Robert's Rules are a widely 
available, long-tested, and, yes, easily understood set of rules that 
*work* to implement democratic deliberation and decision-making. And much 
that is valuable about the alternatives I've seen is quite possible within 
Robert's Rules, but, it's true, most people don't understand the rules. But 
instead of trying to learn them, instead of realizing that, if they have a 
complaint about the rules, there might well be a rule that addresses that 
complaint.

Bylaw revisions should be extensively studied in committee, there should be 
hearings or the equivalent, where the rules are suspended, or most of them 
are, and then formal meeting process merely ratifies the result and gives 
the minority a last-ditch opportunity to alter the result.

So say it more explicitly, the answer within Robert's Rules to the problem 
given with the Previous Question cutting off debate is to shove most of the 
discussion to environments which are outside the Rules. And this is what 
General Robert would recommend, I think, discussing in committee or in the 
Committee of the Whole.

The problem was a time problem, and the rules provide excellent tools for 
dealing with time problems, such as Orders of the Day, which is much 
under-utilized. (Why was there no time to debate that amendment? Probably 
because another issue took up all the time. Orders of the Day prevents one 
issue from killing another; it automatically tables the issue on the floor 
with an undebatable motion for Orders of the Day, if the scheduled time has 
come for a new issue to be taken up. I forget the specific details, I knew 
them at one time (i.e., does it require a second? -- I think yes.)

I'm *not* a parliamentarian, technically, though I served as one for a 
national organization's conference.

>In fact, many alternative rules and meeting and decisionmaking
>processes have been experimented with and found quite useful --
>and, in the view of at least some people, far superior to Robert's
>Rules.

Yes, I've heard this many times. And when I talked to the people, I found 
that they did not understand Robert's Rules. Sure, there are alternative 
meeting processes that *sometimes* work much better than Robert's Rules, or 
seem to until a person comes along who is the very reason why Robert had a 
Rule to deal with the situation this person will create.

I've seen full consensus process result in a situation where the large 
majority were thoroughly dissatisfied with a situation, but the situation 
continued because of one or two persons. Not just continued for a few 
minutes or a few hours. For a few years. I saw people leaving that 
community -- it was cohousing -- because they couldn't take the meeting 
process any more.

Don't get me wrong: I *like* consensus process. But it can be seriously 
abused and abusive. What I say is that good meeting process will be common 
when we have two conditions: first, the majority values consensus 
sufficiently to try to reach it, and second, the majority retains the right 
of decision. Otherwise, inevitably, consensus ends up being minority rule 
whenever the status quo favors the minority.

>  The fact that none of them has yet becomed as widely
>accepted doesn't mean they aren't better or that they won't
>someday become more widely accepted than Robert's Rules
>now are.

The comment is useless unless an alternative to Robert's Rules is 
suggested, which has not happened here.