No, the "ridiculous" rule has not been changed John.

For the benefit of those new club members who are not familiar with the process.... all one has to do is nominate ANY chip issued (up to five chips) during the calendar year, after you receive the current issue of the club magazine in which the nomination form will be enclosed, and you are automatically put on the judges panel and you will receive an official ballot and color illustrations of the candidates to vote on COTY/TOTY/SSOTY. If one does not show any interest in nominating, then one could make the same assumption that one would not be interested in voting.

In addition, there is no way that the club is going to send out ballots and color photo copies to over 3000 members when only 100 or so are interested in the contest to begin with. What a waste of postage and printing and manual effort for someone who can't, or won't, even submit a single nomination. Sorry, them's the rules!