Page:Robert's Rules of Order - 1915.djvu/170

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164
RULES OF ORDER
[§36

acted upon; but if it is not called up, this effect terminates with the session*[1] [63], except in an assembly having regular meetings as often as quarterly, when, if not called up, its effect does not terminate till the close of the next regular session. As long as its effect lasts, any one at an adjourned, or a special, or a regular meeting, may call up the motion to reconsider and have it acted upon, though it is not usual for any one but the mover to call it up on the day it is made if the session lasts beyond that day and there is no need of prompt action.

The Effect of the Adoption of this motion is to place before the assembly the original question in the exact position it occupied before it was voted upon; consequently no one, after the reconsideration is adopted, can debate the question reconsidered who had on that day exhausted his right of debate on that question; his only recourse is to discuss the question while the motion to reconsider is before the assembly. If the question is not reconsidered until a later day than that on which the vote to be reconsidered was taken, then it is open to free debate regardless of speeches made previously. When a vote taken under the operation of the previous question is reconsidered, the question is then divested of the pre-

  1. * In Congress the effect always terminates with the session, and it cannot be called up by any one but the mover, until the expiration of the time during which it will be in order to move a reconsideration.