Vote of Confidence

Q: Every year my organization has to have a "Vote Of Confidence" for its elected officers.  As parliamentarian I cannot find any procedure to do this in Robert's Rules Of Order.  Is there an established voting procedure for this?

You are correct that Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised (RONR) does not mention such a vote. In parliamentary style governments (i.e., England and Canada), there is a vote of no confidence, which essentially dissolves parliament and forces an election. It is rarely used and rarely successful when attempted. There is no such procedure in America.

RONR does mention the motion to Censure (see page 120). A motion to Censure does not remove the subject of the motion, but serves as a formal reprimand. Censures are embarrassing to the recipient and the result goes into the minutes, to be recorded for all time in the history of the organization. A motion to Censure may be the closest thing to a vote of no confidence.

Your organization, however, uses a vote of confidence. RONR mentions a motion to "commend" as being the opposite of the motion to Censure (see page 131, line 12). Your vote of confidence may be similar to a motion to commend the elected officers.

The important question is what would be the repercussions if the organization rejected the vote of confidence? Unless your bylaws and rules have clear procedures for this, I do not think the impact would be any different than that of rejecting a motion to commend.

You are right to be questioning any type of procedure that is vague and not clearly defined. Your efforts here will prevent future problems from occurring. A rule of procedure should be adopted to define how the vote of confidence should be used and the impact of adopting or rejecting it.