Submitted by Richard Harrison (reprint from February 2017)
Opening Move
Thank you for your reception of my short talk on Robert's Rules at the last General Meeting. I promised that I'd try to condense the big book of rules that Robert drew up over a hundred years ago and that has been updated every few years ever since by the Society that bears his name and shares all our interest in having well-run meetings where decisions are made in as democratic a form as possible.
So I'm going to attempt to fulfill what many might say is a foolhardy promise: to capture not just the rules, but the practice of the rules in 7 what I called "cards" at the time.
I do want to add that I feel that our meetings have been very productive and satisfying in many ways not just because we use Robert's Rules, but that the way our community works to solve problems through discussion and participation is the driving force behind those rules. In many ways the Rules fit us and we them because the Rules put into words the spirit in which we meet.
As I mentioned in the meeting General Robert wrote up the first Rules in 1876. But they were not designed for the army. The army already had enough top-down rules, and a chain of command that gave everyone in it a place. He wrote the Rules for his Church Society, which frustrated him immensely since their meetings often broke down into long contentious discussions with no decision.
So the question Robert's Rules is designed to answer is this: How do you get the efficiency he was used to in the army (where he was in command) when you are in a meeting where everyone is in command
His answer was that instead of one decision-making person in charge of organizing others around a decision already given to them, he put the decision in charge organizing the people who were making it.
So the first card in Robert's Rules is the decision to be made. That decision (maybe from the idea of "marching orders") is called the Motion. The motion is the first step in democratic decision-making because it must be spoken out loud in the meeting so everyone knows what it is.
We're used to how these are made -- someone either rises in the meeting to propose a decision to be made, or the decision to be discussed is in the agenda.
The motion must be precisely worded because it directs the organization to do something. So it has to be something that either the organization or someone representing it can actually do.
Before the motion can be debated, it needs a seconder. The seconder assures that at least one other person in the meeting agrees that the decision should be discussed. So someone in the meeting needs to say, "I second the motion" so discussion can continue.
The speaker's job is to regulate the discussion so that everyone who wants to gets a chance to speak to the decision. Notice that all comments need to be directed to the actual motion. The motion itself is the standard for whether a comment is relevant or not. Speakers wait their turn because they know their turn will eventually come.
Strictly by the rules (though we do alter this a bit sometimes -- something the Rules also allows), the motion's mover gets to address all the comments that are made for or against it.
Then the vote.
Depending on the impact of the decision it suggests making, a motion is either passed if a simple majority of voting members vote for it or if 2/3 of the voting members vote for it. A motion about the normal course of business needs only 50% plus one support. A motion to change the rules in a governing document, for example, requires the 2/3.