Re: [ALSC-Forum] Self-regulation and ICANN

[Christian.Ahlert]

Dear Mikael:

This an idea I never quite got:
Could you expand on why you are "utterly disturbed" by the election 
result in Africa. Is more participation necessarily better?
Are a couple of thousand voters in Europe better than only 67 in 
Africa? 
Can a global online-election divided into regions as big as Asia / 
Pacific, or Africa, ever represent the "public" as exact as in nations?

Even if you answer all the question above with yes, it remains 
unclear to me, why At-Large-directors should represent regions or 
even nations, which would arguably imply that a higher voter turnout 
would be necessary to achieve legitimacy.  

Should they not represent view points and values? Should they not  be a counter balance against purely technical and commercial views? 
Does that not mean that "representation" in conjunction with the 
regional voting model implies a wrong goal? Are we not talking about 
a higher degree of "input legitimacy" via making voices to be 
represented on the ICANN board? Is in this context meaningful 
participation, that the ALM is an active part of ICANNs decision-
making not much more important?

Best,
CA  

PS: A detailed study of the election in Africa and the other regions 
you can find at www.naisproject.org



Date forwarded: 	Tue, 17 Jul 2001 09:00:10 -0400
Date sent:      	Tue, 17 Jul 2001 13:15:43 +0200 (MET DST)
From:           	Mikael Pawlo <mikael@pawlo.com>
Copies to:      	forum@atlargestudy.org
Subject:        	Re: [ALSC-Forum] Self-regulation and ICANN
Forwarded by:   	forum@www.atlargestudy.org


On Tue, 17 Jul 2001, Mikael Pawlo wrote:
(---)
> I prefer an indirect participation and I want to see it done through the
> usual governmental elections. To make the system more flexible, each
> government could choose to either elect a person within the government or
> make a national vote of who to appoint. Considering the lack of
> participation in the national elections to the European Parliamant, I do
> think that more elections probably isn't going to work in practice, thus
> forcing the governmental appointment solution.

I should add to this that the Region 4 director of ICANN, Nii Quaynor
representing Africa, was elected with 67 votes out of 130 total valid
votes. Africa is the world's second largest continent with a total 
population of 755 million.

I do not know how ICANN and the At Large Membership Study Committe feel   
about this - we do not get any clues from their Discussion Paper #1 -  but
I am utterly disturbed by this result.

You can not force people to participate, it is a democratic right not to
participate in elections, but in my opinon the solution I suggest would
inevitably lead to a better result in terms of accountability and
representativity than the Nii Quaynor-situation.

Regards

Mikael
P.S. Just to make sure no one misunderstands this - I have nothing against
Nii Quaynor. I do not know him and I do not know all circumstances
regarding the election. Please do not read this message as a hint of foul
play or anything like that, I am only addressing issue of membership
structure. D.S.

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