[EM] Comments re Robert's Rules of Order

[Dave Ketchum]

Lomax demonstrates familiarity with Robert's Rules (RONR).

Suter writes a LOTTA words, for which I have general thoughts:
      RONR is WIDELY used, and gets amended about every decade to do 
additions and other improvements, but without disturbing its reasons for 
popularity.
      ANY set of bylaws based on RONR can include changes and additions, 
such as supporting approval voting.  Those doing such amending need to 
understand RONR well enough to avoid accidental destruction.
      A replacement is not deserving unless it is enough better to deserve 
wide usage (or done by some group that can justify and afford the related 
costs).
      True subsets of RONR are doable, and appropriate for those who need 
only the everyday subset.  Here those with fuller understanding need to 
tread lightly when needs of a meeting require additional abilities.

On details:
      Suter would make a motion to end debate debatable - which sounds 
like destroying the purpose of the motion.

DWK

On Thu, 4 Aug 2005 13:01:46 EDT RLSuter at aol.com wrote:

> I will comment one more time in response to Mr. Lomax's
> defense of Robert's Rules. At the end of his remarks posted
> yesterday, he states (quoting me):
> 
> 
>>>The fact that none of them has yet become 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.
>>
> 
> No, it isn't at all useless, as I'll explain below.
> 
> The question I'm concerned about is whether nor not there
> are alternatives to Robert's Rules (I'll call them
> "Robert's") that would enable people to conduct meetings
> more easily and/or efficiently and/or pleasantly and/or
> democratically and/or rationally and/or with better and more
> enduringly satisfying results. If there are (and I can think
> of no way to prove there aren't), who would not want to know
> what those alternatives are? The only exceptions I can think
> of are people who have vested interests in maintaining the
> status quo, such as publishers of various editions of
> Robert's and professional parliamentarians who trade their
> expertise in Robert's for pay and perhaps amateur
> parliamentarians who have invested a great deal of time in
> efforts to understand and apply Robert's and perhaps to
> defend them against people like me who have the temerity to
> question them.
> 
> One thing I must ask of Mr. Lomax is whether he is a
> professional parliamentarian or a heavily invested amateur.
> If so, then he needs to state that up front before making
> additional comments. That would at least explain why he has
> been so adamantly defensive of Robert's and so unwilling
> even to entertain the possibility that there may be better
> ways to conduct meetings or that Robert's may have at least
> MINOR defects or insufficiencies, owing perhaps to
> widespread ignorance about alternative single winner voting
> methods (even among professional parliamentarians).
> 
> In my view, the single most useful voting method for
> choosing from among multiple alternatives in meetings (e.g.,
> when and where to have the next meeting) is simple approval
> voting. It requires no more time (or very little more) than
> plurality voting, and it is arguably a much fairer and more
> rational and efficient means for making some kinds of
> important decisions than the usual method involving making,
> debating, and voting on a series of motions.
> 
> The first edition of Robert's was published something like
> 100 years BEFORE approval voting was invented. Even today,
> 30 years after that important invention, only a very tiny
> fraction of the public even knows about approval voting,
> much less is aware of how easy it is to use and the good
> reputation it has gained among political scientists who are
> knowledgeable about voting methods.
> 
> But that is just one of many reasons (again, unless you have
> a vested interest in Robert's) for wanting to know whether
> Robert's may need major revisions or whether there may be
> superior alternatives methods for conducting meetings. One
> thing we know is that meetings often go badly or produce bad
> results. There are many POSSIBLE reasons, all of which
> deserve serious consideration.
> 
> One possible reason is that Robert's are often applied
> incorrectly by chairs of meetings and other people, as Mr.
> Lomax argues. If that's the main reason, then better general
> education about meeting conduct and better training of
> meeting chairs are needed.
> 
> The problem is, education and training take time, so this is
> at best only a partial solution. Another good partial
> solution might be the development of very simplified meeting
> rules that could be learned easily and quickly and used for
> meetings in which all or most people lack knowledge of
> Robert's. Such simplified rules might be far inferior to
> Robert's but also far better than nothing. If so, they
> deserve consideration as an alternative that would be
> preferable to Robert's in at least some situations.
> 
> Another possibility is that Robert's Rules are defective or
> inadequate in minor but easily improvable ways. Perhaps all
> that is needed is to incorporate recent insights about
> voting methods and to make minor modifications of some
> rules, such as the rule that prohibits any debate of motions
> to end debate and call for a vote on the previous question.
> (I would argue that at least one person should be allowed to
> speak against a motion to end debate before that motion is
> voted on. I would further argue that this revision should be
> incorporated into future editions of Robert's so that it has
> a chance of becoming a widely accepted practice. Mr. Lomax
> and others will no doubt disagree, but certainly it is a
> legitimate and not unreasonable proposal.)
> 
> A third possibility is that entirely different methods for
> conducting meetings would be better than Robert's in at
> least some if not most or even all situations. Now Mr. Lomax
> thinks that describing this possibility is "useless" unless
> I actually propose an alternative method. But that simply
> won't do. The universe of possible major alternatives to
> Robert's may be very large, and the best possible
> alternative may not even have been invented or imagined yet,
> or it may have been invented but has not yet received much
> publicity.
> 
> The problem of searching for better meeting rules and
> methods is best understood as a research problem, not an
> issue that can hope to be resolved through debates on an
> email list. No doubt a lot of research has already been
> done, but probably there is much more that could and should
> be done. I can easily imagine this becoming the primary
> research subject of some social and behavioral scientists,
> if it is not already. I am much more interested in finding
> out what such researchers have learned than debating
> Robert's Rules with diehard defenders of them. At the
> same time, if all or most of those researchers agree that
> the defenders of Robert's are probably right, I would like
> to know that as well.
> 
> -Ralph Suter
> ----
> Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
> 
> 
> 


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  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
            Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
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