Robert's Rules in Plain English

Journal of Engineering Education, Jan 2003 by Rover, Diane T

Robert's Rules in Plain English by Doris P. Zimmerman HarperPerennial, 1997, 144 pages, ISBN 0-06273-476-8

In Robert's Rules in Plain English, Doris Zimmerman dedicates the book "to everyone who has served as a member or leader of a group, and who has, at one time or another, felt ignorant, ineffectual, helpless, frustrated, repressed, or just plain bored." She is a Professional Registered Parliamentarian, and has distilled some of her expertise in parliamentary procedures into simply stated rules and examples. While this book does not replace Robert's Rules of Order, it can help clarify the procedures. In fact, it provided the precise example I needed in a recent committee meeting I chaired.

The following question arose: does an abstention count, i.e., does it figure into the number of members voting and hence the calculation of majority or two-thirds vote? A colleague who is our resident expert on parliamentary procedure even had trouble with this question. Robert's Rules in Plain English makes the answer very clear. The chapter on Voting states:

In all methods of voting abstentions are not counted. Only the number of votes cast is counted in determining a majority or two-thirds vote unless a special rule is stated in the bylaws.

This is illustrated in an example early in the book in a chapter on Basic Rules. The example is preceded by the statement "Silence is Consent: Those members who do not vote agree to go along with the decision of the majority by their silence." The example describes a committee of seven and a meeting attended by five members. Since a majority is present, the committee has a quorum. The committee is choosing between two landscape architects, let's say A and B, for a playground. Architect A is presented first. Two members abstain from voting. Two members vote yes for A, and one votes no. As a result, architect A has been selected by a majority vote of the committee, since a majority means the majority of members voting. The abstentions do not count. In this example, in a committee of seven, two votes determined the choice. With Plain English, this scenario was much easier to interpret for the committee that I chaired, especially since the status of abstentions may not be well understood.