No person is to be ordained to any office in this church, where there is a regularly organized branch of the same, without the vote of that church. (D&C 20:65.)
Even after Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery had had such powerful spiritual manifestations in 1829 as the restoration of the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods by divine messengers, they could not preside over the Church without the common consent of the people.At the meeting in which the Church was organized on April 6, 1830, those assembled in the Peter Whitmer Sr. cabin had an opportunity to vote on what was occurring. Joseph Smith, in History of the Church, Vol. 1, records:
"Having opened the meeting by solemn prayer to our Heavenly Father, we proceeded, according to previous commandment, to call on our brethren to know whether they accepted us as their teachers in the things of the Kingdom of God, and whether they were satisfied that we should proceed and be organized as a Church according to said commandment which we had received. To these several propositions they consented by a unanimous vote."
In an October 1930 general conference address, Elder Orson F. Whitney of the Council of the Twelve said, "The Great Ruler of all never did and never will force upon any of His people . . . a presiding officer whom they are not willing to accept and uphold. Happily for all concerned, the brethren associated with Joseph and Oliver on that memorable sixth of April of the year 1830 did sanction their ordinations, did `decide by vote' to accept them as their `spiritual teachers.'
"But suppose . . . the brethren had their hands against instead of for them. . . . Would such action have taken from Joseph and Oliver their Priesthood or their gifts and powers as seers, prophets and revelators of the Most High? No. . . . IfT the vote had been unfavorable . . . the brethren and sisters who were waiting to be admitted into the Church would have closed the door in their own faces, would have cut themselves off from a most precious privilege, would have deprived themselves of the inestimable benefits flowing from the exercise of the gifts and powers possessed by the men divinely commissioned to inaugurate this great Latter-day work. . . ."