ACCA claims to have 81,000 members worldwide. Most members pay hefty fees and receive little in return. The magazine is censored, there is no library and no opportunities for face-to-face questioning of the council members. the leadership is not directly elected. The chief executive, the most powerful ACCA official is neither elected nor an ACCA member.

Most members grudgingly pay up the fees and hope that the clown running the Association would go away. That much is evident from the voting figures. From a possible vote of 81,000, the top vote for the 2001 council election is 2,532 (just over 3%) for Jonathan Beckerlegge (ACCA Deputy-President). And that includes the proxy votes cast by the leadership.

With just 3% of the possible vote, ACCA leadership has no mandate from the membership. It has done nothing to make the Association democratic or the leadership accountable. In any other election, such a derisory turn-out will make the election invalid. But this is ACCA.