Operations and Procedures

Election of the Knight Commander

The founding Knight Commander’s term is lifelong, until death, resignation, or removal by vote. Beginning with the second Knight Commander, the term becomes one year, with annual elections.

Review Board

By default, the Review Board is inactive. In the event that there is a lot of membership activity that warrants a Review Board, it can be activated and populated through votes from the available active knights. The Review Board will be disbanded when it has been inactive for more than a year, or at the discretion of the knights.

The “Review Board” exists to handle promotions of rank within the Order. The board consists of 5 active knights, plus the Knight Commander, selected by vote from the body of available active knights. They remain in office until they step down or a vote replaces them, or the board has been inactive or has disbanded. If a review-board knight is one of the sponsors, a different knight must replace him on the board for that vote. The replacement knight could either be appointed by the KC, or come from a list of “standby reviewers”, or be voted in by the other knights, depending on the circumstances. In the instance that no additional knights can be readily obtained for the review board seats, the board can operate with a reduced number of knights.

The Knight Commander’s vote will count twice in the event that a tie-breaker is needed. A two-thirds majority is needed for review board votes to pass, thus requiring a 5/7 of the votes in a 7-vote system. The Knight Commander can’t be a sponsor since he must always vote on the review board, even if the review board is inactive.

General Voting

All votes, including election of the commander, are by simple majority of the participating active knights in good standing, unless otherwise indicated. Inactive or retired knights do not vote, nor do Pages/Yeomen/Squires. Only the available active knights need to participate. All others will not count toward the voting total.

In the event of a deadlocked vote, the deadlock will be broken by doubling the Commander’s vote.

Abstentions do not count toward the total in a vote. Knights that are absent from a vote count as abstentions.

Changes to the bylaws require 2/3 majority or quorum of all active knights in good standing that can be reasonably reached to participate.

Votes are organized and conducted by the Knight Commander. Votes must have a minimum duration of a week to give members a chance to participate. However the duration is up to the Knight Commander, and some may have longer durations. Votes will usually be organized on the Order’s forum (currently the ModernChivalry.org forum, since the Order has grown out of this forum), however other poll systems may be used.

An emergency vote can be called by the active knights in good standing to remove the current Knight Commander. A 2/3 majority or quorum of all active knights in good standing is required to remove the Knight Commander.

Low Membership

Should there be less than five active Knights, Founding Members of the Order may be substituted as alternate sponsors for new members into the Page level, and for knighting existing Squires/Yeomen, until such time as there are again five active Knights.

In the rare event that there are fewer than five available active Knights and Founding Members total, Squires may also be substituted in, or Yeomen if there are insufficient Squires.