It is the RIGHT of a member of a committee to bring main motions, including resolutions. The rights of members, as outlined in the OKGOP Rules and Roberts Rules, are sacred and inviolate and shall not be abridged by any officer.
Every member of the State Committee has a right to participate in the assembly. The Chairman’s role is to enforce the existing bylaws but cannot add rules to the bylaws or promulgate any other rules that are inconsistent with these rules, and is to carry out resolutions, not limit them. Amendments to the bylaws can only be made by the State Convention or 2/3rds of the State Committee.
When the OKGOP bylaws are silent, we turn to Roberts Rules of Order, and its rules are “binding” in “all cases”. Roberts Rules of Order was created to protect the rights of a member to participate in the assembly and find the will of the greatest possible majority. Per Roberts Rules of Order, it is the right of a member to “make motions, speak in debate, and to vote” and “No member can be individually deprived of these basic rights of membership”. A resolution is a main motion.
A very important category of business, in which main motions are introduced for consideration is called New Business. It is the duty of the chairman to ask for new business and allow individual members to offer main motions, whether in the short form of a simple motion or in the form of a longer motion, a resolution. “After unfinished business and general orders have been disposed of, the chairman asks, ‘Is there any new business?’ Members can then introduce new items of business…” This is the accepted standard for order of business.
Chairman Dahm’s “executive order” requires that the State Committee shall not hear or consider any main motions as new business in its assembly unless it is submitted in advance WITH a copy of the minutes of the County Committee meeting wherein the main motion was passed by a majority of the County Committee of said county. It is important to understand clearly, this new dictate of Dahm’s is NOT supported by the GOP Bylaws. There is no wording allowing the restriction or prohibition of main motions by individual members in regular or special meetings of GOP assemblies and committees, not in regard to number, length, topic, timing or requirement for author or source. This action eliminates the voice of the individual and the voice of the minority.
In addition, there is no wording allowing for the elimination of new business in any meeting. This eliminates the opportunity for individual members to participate in the governance of their assembly.
A Chairman prohibiting new business and requiring minutes to accompany main motions destroys the rights of the individual members to bring main motions to the assembly of which they are members, and is inconsistent with the existing rules of the OKGOP Bylaws. Not only is this destruction of rights prohibited by the GOP Bylaws, it is antithetical to the principles of Roberts Rules of Order and republican form of governance.