The quorum for ALA membership meetings, prior to 1994, was 200 members, and there was usually a quorum present. Members of ALA Council were expected to attend the meetings so that they would know the background to membership resolutions that were referred to Council. Members attended because they felt that the membership meeting was the one way that they could ensure that their concerns could be placed on the Council agenda.

With so many Councilors attending, a quorum was virtually guaranteed, and their votes generally provided a check on what many Councilors considered to be the most activist resolutions. Members were able to exercise their rights to introduce and vote on resolutions. After discussion, Council passed some of those membership-meeting resolutions; others were defeated.

At Annual Conference 1992 a resolution (1991-92 CD#60) was proposed that condemned censorship and human rights abuses by Israel. The resolution was initiated by the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT) Task Force on Israeli Censorship. It was approved at the membership meeting in 1992 and was later passed by Council.

Then the fall-out began. At issue was (1) whether Israel should have been singled out in an area of the world in which human rights are all too frequently abused by other governments as well, and (2) whether ALA should pass resolutions dealing with such issues. Numerous outside groups protested, and Council formally "revoked" the Israeli censorship resolution at the next annual conference (1993, New Orleans).

As part of the Council reaction, Council approved (Midwinter 1993, Denver) a bylaws change to be voted on by the membership: to increase the membership meeting quorum to one percent of the membership (about 550 people at the time). Reasons given for voting to raise the quorum included that (1) ALA membership had increased, (2) a group smaller than Council (150 members - 3/4 of the 200) could overturn any action of Council, (3) a small group can pass embarrassing resolutions, and (4) the membership would make the final decision on the annual ballot. Reasons given for voting against the quorum increase included that (1) the increase was too large (from 200 to 525), (2) the increase would limit membership participation because the quorum would seldom be met, (3) Council can amend or defeat membership-meeting resolutions it does not support, and (4) Council actions are not being overturned in the membership meetings.

Council approval of the quorum increase was mentioned as part of the Council report in American Libraries, but no AL articles, editorials, columns, or letters addressed this issue. The amendment was described on the ballot as "to ensure greater representation of membership to speak to issues of importance to the Association," and no additional explanation of the resolution and no pros and cons were included on the ballot. The membership voted to approve the quorum increase on the 1994 membership ballot by a large margin.

As a result of the lack of quorums, proposals to change the quorum have been introduced in Council at a number of conferences. A Special Presidential Task Force on membership meetings was established to determine ways to increase attendance at the meetings so that a quorum would be achieved.

Since the quorum increase went into effect only two of the sixteen membership meetings have had a quorum that allowed them to conduct business. One occurred in 1995 in response to a proposed major change in ALA structure; the other occurred in 2001 - the result of major efforts from the Membership Meeting Task Force and the ALA staff.

At the last annual meeting Council asked ALA President John W. Berry to establish a Special Presidential Task Force on the Membership Meeting Quorum (SPTDMMQ or QTF, for short). QTF will examine the concerns of members who favor and those who oppose changing the membership meeting quorum, examine various proposals about the membership meeting quorum, and develop recommendations about the membership meeting quorum.

Since many people will be unable to attend the Membership Meeting Quorum Hearing at ALA Midwinter Meeting and because the hearing will be only two hours long, we encourage you to send your comments to Larry Romans, Chair of the Task Force, at larry.romans@vanderbilt.edu. Before you comment, please read about the quorum options below and the issues summary on the next sheet or at http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/romans/quorum/prosandcons.html. Additional background information about the membership meeting quorum is available at http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/romans/quorum/.

OPTIONS
In order to keep the discussion manageable, we especially encourage comments on these five options for the quorum:

1. maintain the existing quorum of one percent of the personal members (currently about 560),
2. reduce the quorum to half of the current one percent (or about 280) and end the authority of the membership meeting to set aside any Council action,
3. reduce the quorum to half of the current one percent (or about 280),
4. reduce the quorum to 200 and add the requirement that the 3/4 vote at a membership meeting to set aside Council decisions be ratified by a majority mail vote in which 1/4 of the members of the Association have voted,
5. return to the previous quorum of 200.

With all options members would retain their present authority to petition to set aside any Council action. Options 1, 3, and 5 would retain the authority of the meeting to set aside any action of Council by 3/4 vote.

Options 2 and 4 are both compromises. They lower the quorum, but both remove a primary objection to a lower quorum - that a small group at a membership meeting can overturn the decisions of Council, whose members were elected by ballot sent to the entire membership.

SHORT SUMMARY OF ISSUES
Some people support the current quorum. They say:

1. If we reduce the quorum the membership meeting will be even less representative of the membership at large.
2. A lower quorum is anti-democratic and gives activist "special interests" too much power.
3. Resolutions from the meeting often have a broad social, political, or international focus, about which ALA has no special expertise.
4. Enough members will attend to meet the current quorum) if the issues are important.
5. Membership itself ratified the quorum increase through a mail ballot.
6. Members can bring up issues through individual Councilors or ALA units.

1. Other policy-making groups - like the Executive Board and Council - are no more representative of the membership than is the membership meeting.
2. A higher quorum is anti-democratic because it disenfranchises individual members and allows the "powers that be" to ignore the membership.
3. ALA's policy manual recognizes our broad social responsibilities and these meetings allow active members to present issues that otherwise would not be considered by Council.
4. The membership meeting does not attract more members because timing and publicity are not good, the members don't control the agenda, and there are conflicts with too many other meetings.
5. The quorum vote was under-publicized and misrepresented what was at issue.
6. Other ways to bring up issues require a member to trust and depend on ALA's structure and bureaucracy.

We will present our report at Annual Conference, and it will be on the agenda for the membership meeting. A copy of our final report will be available at http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/romans/quorum/ prior to Annual Conference.