Significance
RONR states that cumulative voting "must be viewed with reservation since it violates a fundamental principle of parliamentary law." All the major parliamentary procedure manuals (RONR, TSC, Demeter, Mason, etc.) contain commentary on the principles; and as the presiding officer and parliamentarian are expected to be reasonably familiar with the contents of their organization's parliamentary authority, they are likely to be exposed to these points of view. Thus, there is potential for even the nonbinding principles to influence an organization's leadership.
Moreover, RONR states that rules that embody fundamental principles of parliamentary law cannot be suspended, even by unanimous consent or an actual unanimous vote. An assembly cannot suspend the rules that allow only one question to be considered at a time; nor can it extend the right to vote to nonmembers, or authorize absentee or cumulative voting by suspending the rules. A bylaw amendment would be required to take such action. Likewise, rules protecting absentees or a basic right of the individual member cannot be suspended.
Read more about this topic: Principles Of Parliamentary Procedure
Famous quotes containing the word significance:
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)
“The hysterical find too much significance in things. The depressed find too little.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“I am not afraid that I shall exaggerate the value and significance of life, but that I shall not be up to the occasion which it is.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)