You all ought to have a ballot in your mailbox by today, assuming you're USAT annual members. This is the most important USAT ballot you've ever had in front of you and, most likely, the most important you ever will have.

This ballot has no names on it. Yes, there is another ballot on which you'll vote for a new board of directors. It does have names, and mine is one of the names next to which a box sits. Yes, I hope (if you live in the Western Region) it's that box you'll check. However, that is not the ballot about which I'm writing. There is a much more important question in front of you.

From Jesus to George Washington, the people we revere most are those who gave up power when they didn't have to. They believed that the decision to turn right or left wasn't the critical issue. To them, of much more import was that we the people, not they the powerful, retain both the right and responsibility to make the decisions that impact us. This Petition, and the resulting ballot in front if you, speaks directly to this ethic.

You will be asked to mark this ballot YES or NO. I'm hoping you'll mark it YES, and I'll tell you why.

There are a lot of items on this ballot and I'll address a few of them below. However, there is one item of overriding importance. The very fact that you are able to vote on this Petition is the result of a right that is almost universally missing among national federations. In the same way that most of you can place a question on the ballot when voting in a statewide election, you the members are able to bypass your elected officials when, from time to time, they are found to have neglected an issue of such importance the membership needs to resolve the issue itself.

Let us take, for example, how our elections are carried out. There are two people currently on the other ballot who didn't think it was of much importance how USAT's elections were run (or, to put it another way, they thought it was of great importance that the election was run in a way that benefited them). "Having free and fair elections," many of you told me, "is more important than the candidates themselves." I agree. Short of filing a lawsuit and running up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, there is no way to keep a wayward board of directors from instituting a set of election rules designed to keep itself perpetually in power. Unless, that is, the members themselves tackle the issue head on. This Petition tackles that issue, and scrubs up election rules previous boards were unwilling to scrub themselves.

Yet this isn't the most important element of the Petition. Its core feature is the protection of the right of petition. Should this Petition fail I, along with a few others (should we be elected to the board), can simply delete the "members right of petition" from existence via a show of hands, and you'll no longer have this right. Don't think this won't happen. It'll be among the first things a new board does.

Why is a new board likely to get rid of this right you now own?

Because almost nobody in governance is like Jesus and George Washington. Once they have power they don't want to give it up. Allowing you the right of petition divests board members, elite athletes, the USOC, the ITU, and USAT's paid staff from unlimited power, and places some degree of power in the membership's hands. This worries all these entities. That's why this Petition, which was delivered to USAT several months ago, is only now being sent to you, and only because Lew Kidder (the Petitions co-author) and I exercised legal maneuvers to force its execution. You'll almost never find the phenomenon of direct representation exercised in sports governance, the way it is in general elections. As a result, other federations almost never have an engaged membership.

Yes, there are certain other elements to this Petition (the petition in full is here). Lew and I thought that it would be much fairer to have eight equal districts instead of three large districts and at-large candidates. Under the current rules of representation, one person (in this case Jim Girand) has been able to garner enough votes using only his California base of power to elect any Western Region director he wants, and any At-Large director he wants. No single state (and I'm a fellow Californian) should be allowed to control the board of an entire nationwide federation the way USAT has been controlled by the Girand election machine. This Petition stops that process by allowing Jim Girand the power to only elect Jim Girand. Yes, under the rules of the Petition he can campaign for others, but he will forever be barred from physically collecting ballots in California that elect those from other parts of the country.

Lew and I also thought it prudent to reign in this board and make it accountable, since they've shown their proclivity for misbehavior. So, for a year or two, or perhaps three, we have pretty stringent rules for how long a member can serve in office. At any time, of course, you the members can ask the board to place the issue of terms and term limits on the annual ballot. Or, you can put it there yourself with 100 signatures of annual members. The point is, it's you, the members, who retain the right to make these changes. You own the federation. It is in your power to have your rights protected, or to divest yourselves of these rights.

Let us say there is one element of this Petition you wish was different. Here's the critical fact. A YES vote means the rest of the Petition's elements will be implemented and you'll have the right, via petition, to remedy that one element that you don't like. If you vote otherwise on this Petition, none of its elements will be enacted, and you'll very probably never again have the ability to exercise the right of petition to self-correct what you don't like about USAT.

In short, a YES vote on this Petition allows you to retain oversight of your federation. Absent a YES vote, the chance to exercise your right to effect your own remedy is short-lived, unless in the future the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton run for USAT's board of directors.