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

[Jeff Williams]

Christian and all stakeholders or interested parties,

Christian.Ahlert@sowi.uni-giessen.de wrote:

> 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?

  My answer would be yes.  The obvious reason is that the more participants
that are active be better positions are known and the better policies
can be determined.

>
> Are a couple of thousand voters in Europe better than only 67 in
> Africa?

  Of course.

>
> Can a global online-election divided into regions as big as Asia /
> Pacific, or Africa, ever represent the "public" as exact as in nations?

No.  The imposed regional approach that the ICANN BoD decided upon
some time ago was hotly debated.  Yet in the interest of expediency the
than Interim ICANN BoD decided upon this approach.

>

>
> 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?

  There should be whatever balance can or does exist.

>
> 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.
>
> _________________________________________________________________________
>
>   ICQ:35638414                                mailto:mikael@pawlo.com
>   +46-70 421 58 25                            http://www.pawlo.com/

Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup - (Over 118k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
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