Demoted for a few reasons:

1) Nothing worse than having 8 people turn up to a meeting room with only 4 seats in it
2) I think some people might find the distinction between this and 'Delegate' confusing, and...
3) I don't really see how an automated process here would add any more value than having an invitee e-mail the chair and ask that someone else come to the meeting as well. It's sad that people don't talk anymore, isn't it? :)

Chris: The chair needs to be in-charge of their meeting. Wiki style management doesn't work in business...there can be many reasons why a particular person is excluded and usurping that judgment can throw the meeting, create political backlash, cause massive productivity loss, or put you in a dark light in the chair's reference point--obviously in more extreme or demanding projects.

I agree with @1, pick-up the phone and ask, or send them a note. :)

I concur with Bill and Matt.

I'm voting this up, even though I already voted for a similar idea here { Link }

As I wrote on that idea posting: This is huge for me. At least a few times a month, I get an invite for a meeting and I want to bring along a colleague. There is no automated way of doing this today. The current functionality, delegate attendance, is useless for me and for most people I've talked to. Heck, I would even vote for removing 'delegate attendance' functionality from Notes.

FWIW, this is very simple in an Outlook/Exchange environment. A meeting attendee can forward an invite to another person, who can then accept the invite to get it on his calendar. When this process happens, the chair will receive a notice first when the invite is forwarded and then will receive the response note when the new attendee accepts.

@2: it would be very simple to have a checkbox for the chair that said "Don't allow invitees to invite others".

@ 1, subpoint 2: I say get rid of 'Delegate a meeting'. I haven't used it once in 15 years of using Notes, but I would use this new feature a few times a month.

@1, subpoint 3, isn't that the whole point, having an automated process? The value is with this new feature, the new person would immediately have an invite in their inbox that they could act on. Today, you have to email/call the chair to get a person added, then you have to wait for them to get to it.

Additionally , there is a related feature that I'd like to see in conjunction with this (and I should probably write it up as an ideajam request). When a chair adds additional invitees to a meeting, the original invitees do not get any notice that additional people have been invited. I don't know how many times I've emailed the chair to say 'please add Bob', then had to follow up a few days later, 'Did you add Bob?", etc.

Chris:

but the users want it nonetheless

Those same users will probably scream when, as pointed out earlier, their meetings are overflowing with attendees. I agree, send an e-mail/call/ping the chair and have that person decide whether to add the new individual.

I think this is a good idea. I don't agree with removing the delegate function though @4 because I know that it's used quite a bit by management.

If the feature was something like 'suggest chair to invite others' it would make sense as often the chair might just forget to invite someone and a simple mechanism to add that person to the invite would be great.

Chris,
Just because you can do it with M$ products doesn't mean every product should do it. As has already been mentioned, meeting attendance should be controlled by the Chair - Wiki style attendance can be an nightmare, particularly when attendees are not expected or the room capacity cannot handle the numbers.
I would suggest however that a "request to add attendee" option that sends the information to the chair may be a suitable middle ground. Allows for additional attendance, but with the control still staying with the Chair.

@4 Just because you haven't delegated in 15 years doesn't mean it isn't used. Try it some time - it's nice to have someone else work for you now and again :-)