Walt, These numbers are completely unrealistic. Even as someone who is politically active with ham issues, I rarely send any comments to my division director and never the president. And not even the FCC. So someone is sending these messages, but they are doing it to the FCC because that is who makes the rules.
The one thing that probably surprised a number of us was the power that an individual petitioner had relative to the the ARRL. It seemed it was almost equal status at times. The FCC picked and chose what they wanted as the outcome and selected from the various proposals and comments. Even quoting certain hams comments as factual studies of frequency useage. The overwhelming majority of hams are not ARRL members. In fact, the number is very low, around 20% from what I have heard. Those 80% of hams do not have a voice at ARRL. But they do have a voice at the FCC, and as they recently found out, it is quite a strong one. The ARRL has to be very careful with their decisions and policy as most leadership does not want to disconnect from their members too far. In the latest FCC rule decisions, I have seen people attack the ARRL as if they had asked the FCC to make certain decisions. In fact, the FCC made decisions contrary to the ARRL's recommendations. 73, Rick, KV9U DuBose Walt Civ AETC CONS/LGCA wrote: > However, I do know that if 5,000 or 10,000 thoughful responses were sent > to the ARRL Division Directors with a Cc to the ARRL President, then I > believe that you would see a change. > > If 10% of a Divisions ARRL membership want to vote their current > Director out of office, they could because if I remember from the last > numbers in QST, Division directors are elected by less than 10,000 > votes. > > Its not easy to get 10,000 division votes...but it can be done if a > couple dozen hams in a division put their mind to it. > > Walt/K5YFW > >
