For a long time, maybe from whenever there first were chapters, the national club bylaws required that chapter members be national members. When the board changed that rule, a proposed constitutional amendment was voted on to reverse the board decision.

The vote was a disgrace for a number of reasons. For one thing, the very wording of the proposed amendment was "hidden" on the back of the ballot and was even misworded in one very important respect -- that new chapter members would have one year to join the national. Yet it received about 59% of the vote, less than the required 66.6%.

I haven't looked at these pages in the last two years, but here are arguments I made in 2001 in support of the amendment -- that chapter members must eventually be natonal members:
http://www.antiquegamblingchips.com/amend.htm
http://www.antiquegamblingchips.com/goodrecp.htm

Robert