Re: [ALSC-Forum] Re: User Interest in ICANN is Broad and Deep

[Sandy Harris]

Mike Roberts wrote:

> What the 2000 voting proved ...

Was that running such elections is a hard problem and, not much to
anyone's surprise, ICANN didn't solve it completely on the first
try.
 
> Let's face it, the ALSC does not recommend a repetition of such an
> election;

I agree that the 2000 election did not work very well, and that the
process shoiuld not be repeated without changes.

However, the nonsense about cutting the At Large Board membership to
six does not solve that problem. Running an international open election
is just as hard whether you're electing 6 or 9 board members.

So let's drop the irrelevant crap about reducing representation of
users at large, and talk about the real issue: how should ICANN run
elections for At Large Board members?

Here is a 1998 letter assuring NTIA of ICANN's excellent intentions:
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/press/ICANN111098.htm

" ... elect the nine At Large Directors. ... the Board has an unconditional
    mandate to create a membership structure that will elect the At Large 
    Directors of the Board

" ... the Board, which will consist of the elected representatives of the
      entire Internet community

" Esther Dyson 
" Interim Chairman 
" On Behalf of the ICANN Board 

Note that word "unconditional". 

Given that ICANN has an unconditional requirement to elect half its board 
as "elected representatives of the entire Internet community", how should
we set about doing that?

In other words, how can we run elections to elect nine At Large board
members as soon as possible?

As I see it, that is the on;y question that belongs on the table.

> democratic governments elected by systems with respectable
> measures of democracy will not sanction it;  and the current ICANN
> Board will never vote for it.

So let's get a properly constituted board, with nine openly elected
At Large members, and go from there.
 
> A year ago, I suggested that if there were genuine support for a
> self-sustaining At Large organization, 

It is not clear to me that we need such an organisation. We clearly
need a mechanism for "the entire Internet community" to have some
opportunity both to follow ICANN events and to vote for directors.
I completely fail to see that this requires an "At Large organisation".

Of course this might be your answer to Esther's:

" ... the Board has an unconditional mandate to create a membership 
" structure that will elect the At Large  Directors of the Board

but, even then, it is not clear why this requires an organisation,
let alone a "self-sustaining" organisation.

What it appears to me to require is dropping the part of the bylaws
that says ICANN does not have members. That would seem to be an
obvious pre-requisite to "creating a membership structure" of any
kind.

> then a few thousand relatively
> well off cybercitizens ought to be willing to contribute $100 to help
> get things started.  This is an amount that professionals, at least
> in the US, pay to their engineering society, their academic
> discipline society, and similar organizations whose programs they
> believe in.

Depending on finances, I sometimes do that for EFF and ACM, and have
often thought I should get around to joining CPSR. 

As you are no doubt aware, all these organisations and several other
public interest groups take positions on matters relevant to ICANN.
See for example:

http://www.eff.org/IP/Internet_address_disputes/
http://www.acm.org/serving/IG.html
http://www.cpsr.org/internetdemocracy/

Show me some evidence that ICANN has "programs [I] can believe in".
Dealing seriously with some of the criticism on the above pages,
especially the CPSR critique of the ALSC report, would be a fine 
start. Then I'll consider contributing.