fsgl wrote on Thursday, May 12, 2016:
To ensure that all attendees have an equal opportunity to speak & to facilitate an orderly process, it will be helpful if all attendees install the Zoom app in advance.
The app allows all attendees to know who are the other participants, who is speaking, who is muted & it also enables a very useful function, the “Raise Hand” button.
If an attendee wishes to speak, by “raising his hand”, the Chair would then recognize him & give him the floor. Other attendees will politely wait their turn until the first speaker has finished & yielded the floor. Then the Chair would give the floor to the second speaker.
Because the meetings are conducted only with sound & no video, the usual visual cues are absent. The “Raise Hand” button is a good workaround for the loss of visual cues & body language.
The “Raise Hand” button will expedite vote counting & make it more accurate. If a roll call vote is not needed in mundane matters, the button will give a quick tabulation of “yes” votes & “no” votes.
Matters, which appear mundane in the present, may become crucial in the future; thus knowing that a motion had 8 “yes” votes & 1 “no” vote would carry more weight than simpy recording that the motion was passed.
In matters that require a super majority (2/3 or 3/4), the roll call vote would be more prudent.
The suggestion of having only no votes recorded was not acccompanied by a motion nor a vote as noted in the minutes of 4/13/16:
Robert proposed another method of vote counting, instead of asking for yea’s, ask for nay’s & to allow nay’s to speak, thus counting only nay’s to expedite voting. (No motion nor voting on proposal.)
The purpose of seconding a motion is to ensure that what is being proposed is not the opinion of 1 attendee exclusively. Another way to accomplish this is to have a thorough discussion prior to voting on the pending motion. This should be done whether the gathering is large or small.
Robert’s Rule of Order will permit boards of 12 or few to dispense with some of the formalities of larger boards such as seconding a motion. As long as our Board allots enough time to discuss a motion, it is in keeping with Parliamentary Procedure to skip seconds on motions.