You have a motion you just don’t want to talk about, not now, maybe not ever, but you really don’t want to spend what you are sure would be 6 hours talking about it right now when you could be doing a million other things. So how do you get people to just shut up about it already…
Motion to Postpone Indefinitely.
The basics for this motion are that it is in second to last place, if you make any other motion (like a point of personal privilege or point of order) they come first, the only thing that’s less important is the actual motion. (Which is honestly pretty much always the least important thing.) You also have to have a second to postpone indefinitely. You also have to have the floor before you can make this motion, it’s not a jump up and shout it out thing. (For how to obtain the floor check the archives.)
This motion is used often to not talk about the main motion under consideration. If your organization or the group doesn’t want to talk about it this is something that happens, a lot.
If this happens to your motion, don’t panic, just start getting people on your side. Say that you should at least get a chance to discuss the motion. Remind them that voting against postpone indefinitely doesn’t mean they are voting -for- the motion in question. It only means you want to talk about it. If you want a down vote and you know you have a down vote on the issue by all means do not make this motion, it’s silly and can backfire big time. When your motion is under fire this way tell people that they have a right to get a vote on it, let people know that this is an important issue that your organization needs to take a stance on, or that your organization needs direction for.
If you want a down vote but it’s close you can test the water essentially to see what the votes might be. Doing this doesn’t risk an actual vote which could end up not going your way and having to get rid of motion once it’s been passed is a lot more work than simply voting it down. Reintroducing a motion can be quite a challenge as well.
It is also something that gets debate time. So if you’ve used up all your debate time and still really, really want to talk you can shout this out (in your turn) and manage to get a little more debate on the issue, but only in regards to keeping or postponing it but still about it. If you just need 30 more seconds to talk about something and have a friend this is a way to do it.
Overall this is a difficult beast but if you have to get rid of the motion and don’t have the votes this might be a way to do it. Remind people that they can bring it up some other time but you really don’t have the time for it now, let people know that this is an important issue and everyone has to have all the facts and may need additional time to do independent research.
Postponing a motion indefinitely kills it for that meeting for sure, but resurrecting it is possible. For how to bring it back stay tuned for the next edition!
