RE: [ALSC-Forum] Notes on At Large Options

[Bruce Young]

Thomas wrote:

> . . . a representation scheme which is "pay to vote" would be perceived
>as politically incorrect, and would draw considerable fire from
>various sources.

Agreed.  Any potential funding scheme has its down side.  This will probably
be one our biggest hurdles.

>Being willing to serve on the board doesn't mean you're competent, and
>being competent doesn't have to imply that you want to serve on the board,
>or even consider yourself suitable for that job.

And this is different than the U.S. Congress how?  :)
This is the challenge of any democracy: to find those few who are competent
and convince them to serve!  And trying to vote in a few incompetents as
possible.

> . . . in order to get "actual at large nominations", you'd have to
>perform global primaries, which basically means that you shift the
logistical
>and organisatorial problems from the elections to the primaries.

True.  But is this necessarily a bad thing?

>I don't think that Option A will work as designed, and I'm not sure about
Option B.
>Option D looks so complicated that I (1) don't want to look at it in
>detail, and (2) don't think it would ever be practicable.

I'm not happy about any of these three options either.

>The SOs are supposed to be the place where consensus is developed.
>This does, in particular, imply that the ICANN process can't
>currently yield any consensus which includes individual users -
>these aren't properly represented in the SO structure.  It does, in
>turn, imply that individual users will need representation within
>the SO structure if the current consensus and SO process is supposed
>to persist in some manner or another.

This is the primary argument *against* the current SO system: why should
Internet users have to have an SO?  The more appropriate question is: why
should the SOs have a right to vote for their own board members?!

Bruce Young
Portland, Oregon
byoung651@home.com
http://members.home.net/byoung651/index.html