The Close Vote

A group can keep the letter of Tradition Two, take a vote, and still break itself, by forcing a split decision through on one count. Picture a business meeting with thirteen members there. The motion is to move the meeting to a new night. Six want it, six don't, one shrugs, and it passes seven to six. By spring the six have stopped coming, and two of them have started a meeting across town. Nobody broke a rule. But the group's conscience is the members together, and half of them just walked out. A.A. learned this the hard way. When Bill W. and the old-timers planned the elections for A.A.'s first General Service Conference, they named the danger (A.A. Comes of Age): "Another prime cause of grief was the hotly contested close election, which nearly always left behind a large and discontented minority." So they asked for a two-thirds vote, a margin big enough that the losing side could live with it. The Long Form names where a group's authority lives (Big Book, p. 563): "a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience." A seven-to-six split is a room that hasn't finished deciding. Test it tonight: when your group divides nearly in half, ask whether the question can wait a month for more talk instead of a vote.