Quote Originally Posted by rkumetz View Post
I have to say that I have had frank discussions with myself about the appointment of the NAFA president and vice-president by the board.

On one hand it goes against my grain to not have a direct say in who is at the helm.

On the other hand there is a relatively good argument for leaving it the way it is. At the moment the board functions a bit like the electoral college.
Living in a state with a dozen falconers (on a good day) if we all voted for those offices it is like that states like Texas (nothing against Texans. God bless Texas..... )
and California would elect those officers and I might as well just not bother voting. Sort of like the people in 95% of New York counties who have their votes for national
offices negated by the huge population in the NYC.

It is not a perfect system but then again the alternative has problems too.
I dont think the electoral college analagy applies here very well. Although my understanding is the the board appointed president was a check against hostile control by anti-falconry sorts coming from outside. If so, that seems silly to me because there is no check against a majority of the board being made up of anti-falconry sorts.

What has happened in the not so distant past is for crony control occur, because the board knew which good ole boy should be appointed despite what the peasant membership might think of the chap. That has not been a problem recently, thankfully. But I have been told that it was so bad in the 80s (a bit before my time in NAFA) that it nearly caused the collapse of NAFA, and likely set up the events that lead to the schism that eventually lead to the creation of the AFC.