Organizational meeting December 1st

ARTICLE IV: Organizational Meeting and Election of Officers

Section 1 – The outgoing chairman of the Republican County Executive Committee shall, within thirty (30) days after the committee members take office (December 1), call an organizational meeting for the purpose of electing officers. It shall be the responsibility of the outgoing chairman to open the meeting, and the first order of business shall be the election of the chairman and vice chairman as set forth in the rules and bylaws as promulgated by the State Executive Committee. Thereafter, the new chairman shall preside, and the agenda shall include, but not be limited to, the election of a secretary and a treasurer, the filling of any vacancies on the committee, and any other business which may appropriately come before the committee.

The above officers shall be members of the County Executive Committee, and all county party officers shall be elected for a two-year term. At the conclusion of each two-year term officers shall be elected in the same manner as is required at the organizational meeting. Officer elections held at the organizational meetings are final and are not subject to recall.

Section 2 – The Chairman shall appoint, with the approval of the full committee at a meeting at which a quorum is present, such standing sub-committees, their chairmen and such other officers as may be required in the administration of the county committee’s business, as long as their functions do not violate any of the provisions of the constitution, bylaws or the applicable Florida laws. The Chairman shall be considered an ex-officio member of all standing committees appointed. Other ad hoc committees and their chairman may be appointed by the Chairman without approval of the County Executive Committee.

Section 3 – The election of officers and filling of vacancies shall be by ballot. In the event there is but one nomination for any officer or office, the ballot may be dispensed with by unanimous vote of the membership present and eligible to vote. All nominations shall be from the floor. No ballot shall be preprinted with the name of any candidate.

Section 4 – The presiding officer at all meetings shall be the county chairman, and in the absence of the chairman, the vice chairman, secretary or treasurer, in that order, shall preside. If none of the said officers are present, the membership, by a majority vote, shall name the presiding officer.

Section 5 – In the event the county chairman is unable to continue his duties the vice chairman, secretary or treasurer, in that order, temporarily assumes the duties of the chairman and must within 60 days hold an election for the purpose of filling the vacancy. All vacancies shall be filled by the majority vote of a quorum present at the duly called meeting of the County Executive Committee.

Section 6 – A person may hold only one position as a county chairman or a state committeeman or state committeewoman, except in counties with less than 750 registered Republicans, unless this rule is waived by the State Executive Board.

Florida Statutes 103.091(6)(a) In addition to the members provided for in subsection (1), each county executive committee shall include all members of the Legislature who are residents of the county and members of their respective political party and who shall be known as at-large committeemen and committeewomen.


Robert’s Rules of Order, Newly Revised, 10th Edition

Elections

In the absence of a rule establishing the method of voting, the rule that is established by custom, if any, should be followed, unless the assembly, by adoption of an incidental motion or incidental main motion, agrees to do otherwise.



BALLOT ELECTION. Two alternative procedures for the sequence of nominating and voting in elections by ballot can be prescribed or adopted . . . . the first method requires the least time, while the second affords greater flexibility in choosing officers. These procedures are as follows:



1) All nominations can be completed before any balloting takes place—in which case voting for all offices is commonly done by a single ballot.

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2) Under the usual form of the second election procedure, balloting for each office immediately follows nominations from the floor for that office. The ballots are counted for one office and the result of that election is announced—after repeated balloting, if necessary—before the next office to be voted on is opened to nominations from the floor. The members are thus able to take into account the results for the offices voted on first, in deciding upon both nominations and votes for later offices.

Under this method the ballots normally consist of small slips of blank paper handed out by the tellers as each ballot is taken—on which voters write the name of the candidate of their choice (who need not have been nominated). This method is generally practical only in assemblies small enough that the votes from each balloting can be counted while the meeting briefly pauses—usually without recessing or proceeding to other business, although it can do either of these things if it wishes.



Whichever one of the preceding methods of election is used, if any office remains unfilled after the first ballot, as may happen if there are more than two nominees, the balloting should be repeated for that office as many times as necessary to obtain a majority vote for a single candidate.

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If the bylaws require the election of officers to be by ballot and there is only one nominee for an office, the ballot must nevertheless be taken for that office unless the bylaws provide for an exception in such a case. In the absence of the latter provision, members still have the right, on the ballot, to cast “write-in votes” for other eligible persons.



VIVA-VOCE [voice vote] ELECTION. The viva-voce method of election finds application principally in mass meetings—or in cases where a candidate is unopposed or the election is not strongly contested, and the bylaws do not require election by ballot. [The County Model Constitution used by the BCREC does require election by ballot. Art.IV, Sec.3]