USCF Politics Website and 2010 USCF Elections

Blog of the day: USCF Politics

USCF Politics has been following Susan Polgar and Paul Truong's lawsuit against USCF for a little over a year. The primary officer, "Wick" is strongly against the lawsuits, however he allows Jack Le Moine, a Polgar supporter and former moderator on Polgar's website Chess Discussion, to post frequently, giving the blog two sides to the issue and making it a discussion rather than a rant.

The 2009 Elections showed that the vast majority of (voting) members strongly disagreed with Polgar's lawsuit. The three candidates that were endorsed by her finished 5th, 7th, and 8th out of 11 candidates (the top 4 won terms). Doesn't seem like too bad a thrashing unless you look at the numbers. Mike Atkins, the 4th place finisher had 2672 votes, Mikhail Korenman, the 5th place had 822 votes, less than a third of Atkins. Emboldened by these results, the executive board moved to suspend Polgar and Truong's memberships and expel them from the board, a decision that was supported by the Delegates at the US Open.

I was worried about the precedent that this set, that perhaps the USCF board would abuse this power, and feel that they could suspend membership of any person that they disagreed with, fortunately I think they handled this in the best possible way, and the Delegates could have overturned the decision if they had felt so inclined.

With Polgar and Truong gone, there are now two open spots. Hard to say who'll run (deadline to get the necessary signatures and pay the $250 filing fee is January 11th, but there's a few people I'm pretty sure we'll see.

Sam Sloan: The perpetual candidate. Has run for office in every race, ususally finishing in the bottom quarter of the field (8th/9 in 2005, 9th/10 in 2007, 9th/11 in 2009). However he managed to finish 2nd in the last special election in 2006 and won a 1-year term, so he may do it again in 2010. During his term, he was censured by the board for making accusations that were not backed up with any evidence, and several sources lamented that he may have cost USCF some sponsorship money either with his inappropriate website or his many, many online rants. Despite all this, I think Sam has an outside chance of winning a spot simply as a protest candidate

Brian Lafferty: Brian finished 10th/11 in 2009, although he likely would have finished higher had he not withdrawn a couple of months before the election in favor of the Goichberg slate. A cynic might suggest that in exchange for Brian withdrawing in 2009, Goichberg might endorse his candidacy in 2010 but I hope not. Brian's pretty new to the USCF (until recently had a provisional rating), and is not an experienced organizer or director.

Mikhail Korenman: Mikhail finished 6th/10 in 2007 and 5th 2009, so odds are that he'll try again in 2010. He could run on the idea that it'd be bad to have all seven members of the board in the same 'slate' or 'party'. I considered voting for Korenman in 2009 and I'd probably consider it again in 2010 depending on who the other candidates were. Then again he might be fed up with it all and end up not running.

It could get interesting.