Sable Timeline-page5

1991
ASC Board: President-Marilyn Pryor, Tom O ‘Neal, Al Davies, Monty Barber, Louise Milner, Cynthia Sykora, Carl Anderson, Richard Duding, Jean Peterson, Charles Born, Marilyn Spacht, Olga Mahlstede, Jeanne Meister, Muriel Barber. Standard Chair-Ron Fabis.
The cover letter for this ballot reads in part, "As most of you are aware, the Board of Directors has been working with AKC to bring our recently voted Standard changes into conformity with the current requirements for clarity and logic required by AKC guidelines. The facts we have been asked to work with are:

This vote on the Standard resulted in the same text for describing color as now exists.
The vote on the Standard resulted in a disqualification relating to color being added to the Standard.
This interaction of these two sections may cause some ambiguity. We have been asked to resolve the ambiguity.
Therefore, we are submitting for a membership vote proposed changes in the Color and Markings section of the Standard."
This ballot offered the choice of the current Standard or the previous ballot’s Alternative B, which did not include the sable colors. This was done despite the fact that Alternative A had received FAR more votes than Alternative B in the previous balloting. This was also done despite the recommendations of the Standard Committee! At this time we did not have a Standard that conformed to AKC’s requirements. And there was supposedly a deadline to come into compliance drawing near! With no other choices available and the feeling of urgency to have a Standard that was in compliance, this ballot was approved with 786 ballots returned and 573 in favor of the proposed revision which did not include sables in the list of colors.
So it took 12 years and six ballots to finally get the sable colors disqualified despite the fact that every vote contained a majority of members returning ballots in favor of including the sable colors. Some of those votes missed the 2/3 majority by less than 30 while the ballots that attempted to disqualify the color never even came close to the 2/3 majority that was needed until the 1990 ballot.