Survey of league chess

[David Sedgwick]

"The important provision here is this: "Members of the Executive Committee shall be ex-officio members of the Council." If you count all the Committee posts they add up to 15. Because they're members of the Council, they can vote. Between them they have 15 votes (and another 5 votes if the specified postholders use up a club vote as well).

If nothing else, this exchange has shown that the current wording of the Rules is not as clear as it might be."

True - in my 35 years (it feels so much more) of attending the meetings, para 3 has been taken to be the rule. Easy to fix - delete, "Members of the Executive Committee shall be ex-officio members of the Council." from rule 6.

We did a major overhaul of the rules recently, partly to simplify them, but all 15 seem to have missed that.... (Not that there are usually as many as 15 Committee members.)

How about something like "Members of the Executive Committee shall be ex-officio members of the Council, but only the Officers of the League shall have voting rights thereon."?

[James Toon]

I don't think the answer lies in restricting voting rights to the five specified "Officers of the League." There are 10 posts on the Executive Committee that have specific functions and a further five additional members. Why should there be any distinction between postholders? Why should the Vice-Chairman (for example) be entitled to vote when the Grader is not? In my view it would be better to give them all equal voting rights and to increase the voting power of the clubs.

[Martin Benjamin]

Martin is too good a player to play down the order for long.

A generous comment, but it has uncomfortable overtones of the football club's curse -"too good to be relegated". However, I shall forward it to my captain (chess); my captain (cricket) would fall about laughing, as playing down the order has been my rightful place for over 30 years.

[David Sedgwick]

I don't think the answer lies in restricting voting rights to the five specified "Officers of the League." There are 10 posts on the Executive Committee that have specific functions and a further five additional members. Why should there be any distinction between postholders? Why should the Vice-Chairman (for example) be entitled to vote when the Grader is not? In my view it would be better to give them all equal voting rights and to increase the voting power of the clubs.

I put forward my suggestion as a possible means of regularising the position which, according to Kevin Thurlow, had long been understood to be the staus quo.

If you want to change the voting structure, that's fair enough, but it's beyond the intended scope of my comments

[John Ariss]

James,
Have forwarded you the information you were missing from the Exeter and district league