Most of the work of a deliberative assembly takes place between when the chair first states a motion and when he or she puts the question for voting. This period of time is known as “debate”, and gives an opportunity for every member to consider the merits of the question at hand, to speak, [...]

Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised is one of the most popular parliamentary authorities in the English-speaking world, and is the latest manifestation of of a book that has been around for more than 130 years. Since the beginning, the authors have received questions from readers about circumstances not quite covered in the book, [...]

When people get together to act in a collective manner, one of the most important things they do as a group is make specific decisions. Without a robust decision-making process, the group cannot act collectively. The instrument used by such groups to make a decision is called a “motion”. A motion is [...]

In many organizations, the by-laws or rules prescribe that an election will take place by secret ballot (or simply “by ballot”, which implies a secret ballot). If this is the case, it is critical that certain procedures be followed or else the election will be drawn into question. This is because each individual [...]

More observant visitors to Dan Lynch Online may have noticed yesterday the appearance of a new link in the Features section of the sidebar: Parliamentary Blog. This new link represents two new and interesting projects for me.
First, it represents a decision to create a second blog, one which is far more focused in topic [...]

When groups of people meet for the purpose of making collective decisions, certain procedures are generally followed. These procedures have been carefully developed over hundreds of years to where they are today, and continue to be developed into the future. The most basic and invariant elements of these meeting procedures are: a chairman [...]

It sometimes happens that one of the officers of an organization—such as the president, a vice-president, the secretary, the treasurer, or a director on the executive board—decides that he or she is no longer willing or able to continue to serve as such. In general, the officer submits his or her resignation, the resignation [...]

Welcome to Parliamentary Blog, by Dan Lynch. My goal for this blog is to share my knowledge of parliamentary procedure and Robert’s Rules of Order with the general Internet public, and thereby promote my services as a parliamentarian for hire. I will be posting about parliamentary topics that will be of interest to [...]

As discussed previously, I recently attended the Advanced Seminar in Parliamentary Law put on by the Robert’s Rules Association. The seminar was well worth the time and money I spent to attend, and I look forward to attending similar events in the future.
The adventure began at 3:00 AM on Monday, as I woke and [...]

A week or two ago, the Robert’s Rules Association—which owns the rights to Robert’s Rules of Order—posted an announcement on its website that an Advanced Seminar in Parliamentary Law would be held at the Four Points by Sheraton hotel at Baltimore on October 9-10, 2006. They invited all “serious parliamentarians” to attend, for the [...]