There was a motion (and a second) from the floor of the Assembly to give Executive Presbyters an ADVISORY vote.
What does this mean? In addition to polling the standard advisory votes (Young Adult Advisory Delegates, Missionary Advisory Delegates, and Theological Student Advisory Delegates), prior to every vote, we would now ALSO vote Executive Presbyters/General Presbyters/Transitional Presbyters/Whatever else they may be called right now.
Lickety-split before you know it, the motion passed by a show of hands. And, judging from the buzz I heard from commissioners and advisory delegates, there were those who doubted that the voice vote was clear enough for a definitive answer to the motion.
Someone called for a "division of the house," which would require the number of votes on each side to be counted. Because we were in the midst of #technopalypse (when none of the technology we planned to use was working and it would have required a paper ballot), the Moderator, using his discretion, put off the "division of the house" until Wednesday when the plenary is in session again and all the bugs have been worked out of the system.
Based on the conversations we are having, now that we've had some time to think about it, I strongly suspect that this motion will fail when the votes are counted. Reasons tossed around include: we already have sufficient advisory votes; we don't have enough "clickers" for the EPs to use to vote; they're not always there when business is in session; not every Presbytery has an EP and not every Stated Clerk is in attendance to fill that role.
This was probably the case of a newbie Moderator who did his best to move things along--he seems eager to do right by the Assembly and God. And, in the end, the vote will probably end up coming out "right" (ie the will of the majority of the Assembly) even if it didn't start that way. We'll see for certain on Wednesday.
That's Jesus, I tell ya!
UPDATE: The vote fails, the motion garnering only 48% of the votes.
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