USCF Delegates Meeting

9:35: Initial call of the roll. 72 present (well above a quorum), later increased to 75. After some trivialities like approval of the minutes, the first item of business is a motion from the Bylaws committee to suspend the rules for a number of amendments. And the chair announced that we'd go into closed session at 2 p.m. to consider the appeal by Polgar and Truong to their membership suspension. This is taking longer than it should. I'm afraid Bill G does not run a very taut meeting.

9:45: Finally we get to the Bylaws amendments. Boiled down, we have: 1) Prohibition against an EB member suing the USCF, with compulsory arbitration; 2) Get rid of SOMOV. Delegates to be appointed to 1-year terms by the State Chapters. 3) Ratification of every vote since 1998, just in case. Harold Winston is now speaking.

9:55: Ratification passed. Litigation ban approved. Also, anyone suing the USCF must disclose it in CL when running. (This seems pretty unlikely to arise.)

10:15: Currently debating a sleeper clause, which would allow states to appoint Delegates from other states. I think it's a lousy idea, but it proved popular and was passed easily. It turns out that the Bylaws Committee proposal will continue to allow door appointments (with 1-year terms, the absent Delegates can simply be declared to have resigned). This, of course, would continue to allow a small group to pack the meeting. Here comes the new boss ...

10:35: To the heart of the matter: Go back to having State Chapters select Delegates for 1 (calendar) year terms. This would start in 2011, after the current Delegate terms expire. Much of the debate seems to be from people who don't like whoever is running their State Chapter. My nose bleeds for them. Passed.

10:45: Last Bylaws items: 1) A "severability" boilerplate clause. Passed. 2) Allowing the membership meeting to appoint up to five "extra" Delegates for that meeting. The backstory is that a few states have active feuds which froze out the losing side. Also, there are a few old-timers who always come to the Delegates Meeting but are not real popular in their own states. (The closer they are ...) Some trivial debate, but everybody knows they're going to pass this. Can't we just do it?

10:50: OK, passed. Done with Bylaws. Now we get to listen to committee reports for a while.

11:20: Reports from the President and ED. Heartwarming stuff, but it's kinda dragging. I doubt we'll get to anything substantive before lunch, and then we'll only have an hour until we have to deal with the Polgar/Truong mess.

11:45: An annoying person not familiar to me moved to reconsider the ratification motion, on the grounds that not everyone has read the entire info package. Looks like it will pass, and we'll have to do all this again in a couple of hours. Seems idiotic to me, since the info package is about the size of Crime and Punishment. No one is going to read it in the next two hours. Of course, most of it is a waste of paper -- complete copies of all legal filings, complete transcripts (not minutes) of EB meetings, and such piffle. If the Delegates haven't made up their minds yet, they're not going to change now.

11:58: Reconsideration passed. Idiots. (Oh, did I say that out loud?) Now we get to vote on it again at 2. Probably no blogging for a while after that, since we'll be in executive session for the Polgar/Truong appeal.

2:10: Still waiting for the President to show up so we can start. When we finally do, we'll have to deal with the "ratification" business again, followed by the Polgar/Truong appeal in executive session.

2:15: Back in session. Ratification passed again, near-unanimous with one abstention.

5:25: After an extended debate, which I'm not allowed to talk about (Question from the floor: "How long does confidentiality last?" Answer from the chair: "In microseconds?"), the revocation of Paul Truong's membership was upheld by a vote of 58-16, and Susan Polgar's by 55-21.

(Click here for day 2.)