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 [...]