At-large Esperantists residing in countries without national Esperanto bodies would be entitled to elect a smaller number of delegates as well.
The new election system weakened the traditional internationalist outlook of the UEA, removed from office the idealist Esperanto movement leaders like Edmond Privat, Johannes Waldemar Karsch and Andrei Cseh, and turned the UEA into a loose confederation of national Esperanto associations with conflicting nationalist ideologies.
[1] The German Esperanto Association not only tried to accommodate itself to the Nazi regime but even adopted its racist theories, expelled its Jewish members and minimized the extent of Hitler's human rights abuses.
Leaders of the Swiss Esperanto Society challenged the decision in Geneva district court (Genfer Amtsgericht ) on the grounds that by the terms of the UEA constitution its headquarters was to be in Switzerland, and delayed the move for a year.
By March 1937 most national federations (except for Spain, still in the throes of the civil war, and Switzerland) had left the UEA and affiliated with the newly established International Esperanto League (IEL).