LAI, JOHN: Long-time member and President of the club (Fall 1998, Winter 1999). Was offered an honorary membership in 2003; objected to the then-current Constitutional terms which allowed proxy voting and allowed honorary members to vote, because he said he was concerned by the possibility of "hostile takeover" kinds of situations, where a small group of people might take over one meeting, vote themselves and all their friends honorary memberships, and then come in at a future meeting with lots of written proxies and be able to effectively control the meeting without even having paid. After some negotiation, the club agreed to resolve those issues, and John said he would accept the honorary membership after they were resolved. Resolving the issues took a very long time. It got hashed around and tabled and argued again and again and even after the decisions were made they were not promptly posted on the Web site and so lots of people didn't know about them and in the middle of it all Eric Gerlach was trying to make other Constitutional reforms and so on. See Proxy voting and FEDS History.