satisfiedThe meeting last Saturday was long and contentious. There were a lot of people in the room, more than for any other meeting of the group than I can recall. The room seemed to be divided into three roughly equal groups: supporters of my side of the issues, supporters of the other side, and folks who'd heard about the controversy and wanted to put in their two cents worth, but not really affiliated with either faction.
The first real test was on the vote by mail bylaws amendment. There was a fair amount of debate, but in the end it failed, 144-79. Notice that that's nearly a 2-1 margin...which means that the unaffiliated folks largely went the way I'd been advocating.
The election results were even more one-sided. The Gang of Three had a bombshell to drop, and it wasn't the one I'd expected.
km5r walked in with a stack of 86 signed, notarized proxy votes. Only one problem: the Society's bylaws specifically outlaw proxy voting. There was a lot of wrangling about how to deal with the situation, especially since they quoted a section of Texas law that appears to mandate accepting proxy voting for election of directors.It didn't matter. When the votes were counted, the lowest number of votes for any of the slate of candidates I supported was 151. The highest number of votes for any candidate on the opposing slate (which happened to be
km5r) was 61 - which meant that, even if the proxies were counted, they'd still have lost. One of that slate had the class to concede formally at the meeting; the rest, I'm told, walked out looking dazed.The battles will now move to another arena, as one of their supporters has formed a competing frequency coordination group, and I'm sure they'll join forces with them. That situation will be murky for some time. I'll talk about that in my next entry, which I'll probably post while I'm waiting for my flight this afternoon.
