[governance] Reinstate the Vote

Carlos Afonso ca at rits.org.br
Thu Nov 22 14:37:26 EST 2007 

Trying to add to the excellent comments by Jacq, I recall the crucial 
flaws in ICANN's "direct election" process of the past -- the planet 
were the "user community" lived (now that Vint is talking about the 
interplanetary Internet...) was then divided (by a high-school geography 
professor from Nowhere Bay, Arkansas, I assume) by regions -- each 
region would elect one rep.

Not only the regional division was politically stupid (Mexico was part 
of the North American region, not of Latin America and the Caribbean, 
and so on -- I am sure most Mexicans who knew about this were pissed off 
knowing they would certainly always be represented by a "gringo", even 
if this "gringo" were -- and was -- our nice compa Karl Auerbach), but 
also the electoral system would allow for the perpetuation of certain 
countries' reps in power.

There were no rotation provisions, no parameters to balance a 190M 
people country like Brazil with a 1M people country like Trinidad and 
Tobago. Fine, all are Internet users (after we take a huge dosis of 
naïveté medicine), but in the regional division, the Brazilian rep, in 
the absence of balancing and rotation provisions, would always win in 
its region. Mexico or Canada would never win in their region, and so on. 
BTW, in protest, at the time I voted for the Uruguayan candidate. Is it 
too naïve to believe in this context that any elected regional rep will 
be representing the region's interest in an impartial manner, not the 
interests who pushed in her/his favor? It is, unfortunately.

And, above all, the set of five elected were a nearly 1/4 minority in 
the board, giving them at best (if they could build consensus among them 
around crucial issues) an advisory or minority vote nature. At the time, 
ICANN was in the end seeking cosmetic legitimacy disguised as universal 
user representation.

Andrew McLaughlin (now Google's Über lawyer) coordinated that electoral 
process (at the time he defended it of course), and certainly could give 
us a good critical (I hope!) view of it.

We enter into a territory of tremendous complexity when we want to 
establish representation of the "user community" -- this is too big, too 
diversified, and at the end too UNrepresentative precisely because of 
its generic, diverse, multisectoral, multicultural, multi-etc nature. 
And, most importantly, traversed by all interest groups (the user as a 
rep is actually a rep of his/her interest group etc etc).

So, reinstate the vote for whom, for what, with what expected legitimacy 
and true representation??? It is the real world (you know, the planet?) 
we are talking about... What structures of representation could we think 
of instead of repeating the disaster of the past?

--c.a.

Jacqueline A. Morris wrote:
> Hi Milton
> I believe that direct voting by individual internet users will continue to
> skew towards specialist and tech-savvy people in developed countries who
> have consistent and adequate internet access, access to information about
> the vote etc. The ALS model works to get information to and from users who
> are affected by, but not motivated or know enough or are connected enough to
> find out that there's a vote, where and how to vote, etc. 
> 
> There are ALSes that send people out to remote rural villages that do use
> the Internet (slow access, email only sometimes)  but these users do not
> spend their time following these processes. These ALS members have a
> consultation - explain the issues, discuss how they will affect those users,
> and return with information on how those users see specific issues. 
> 
> That's the educational and outreach value of the ALS structure. Since the
> Caribbean ALSes have formed, there's all sorts of projects that I've seen to
> educate and inform the internet-using public about governance and technical
> issues  - in schools, radio programmes, etc. I have been informed that this
> is not just in the Caribbean either... so there's value in the ALS model
> that is not there in "direct representation"
> 
> But if there were to be another "global election"...
> 
> What can you suggest to make sure that a global vote catches as many people
> as possible in the net? What's the minimum acceptable participation? Of 1
> billion, what % would count as a representative global election? Can we do
> this properly without IDN implementation? As that might discriminate against
> non-ascii script users? How many languages should the ballot be in? How
> should the information be disseminated to make sure that EVERY user knows
> about the vote and the issues? 
> 
> It might make sense in the future when we're all connected from birth, but
> right now, any election would not be truly 'global"
> 
> jacqueline
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Milton L Mueller [mailto:mueller at syr.edu] 
> Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 10:19
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; yehudakatz at mailinator.com
> Subject: RE: [governance] Reinstate the Vote
> 
> Yehuda:
> It is good to see your support for this very simple and basic form of
> accountability, which ICANN abandoned in 2000 after the party slate lost the
> election in the US and Europe.
> 
> This form of public input is far more meaningful than the ALAC, which
> requires people to invest hundreds of hours creating and maintaining
> organizations which is simply not economically viable given the small stakes
> individual internet users have in domain name issues.
> 
> To support democracy in ICANN about all you can do now is: 
> * provide input to ICANN's At Large AC review process, which will be
> starting soon 
> * Make comments in the US Government's February proceeding
> * if you have lots of time to wast^^ spare, get involved in ICANN at large
> itself and advocate that position. 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: yehudakatz at mailinator.com [mailto:yehudakatz at mailinator.com]
>> Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 12:45 AM
>> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
>> Subject: [governance] Reinstate the Vote
>>
>> To:
>> Mr. Kieren McCarthy
>> General Manager of Public Participation
>>
>> Ok Kieren lets work together,
>>
>> I would like the Voting mechanism reinstated,
>> which that was taken away shortly after the Elections in October of 2000
>> Ref.: http://www.icann.org/announcements/icann-pr21sep00.htm
>>
>> Please layout the path for us to accomplish this.
>> (walk me through it)
>> Which Icann list(s) need posting to?,
>> Who should we contact directly?
>> and How should we best approach the subject matter?
>> (provide us some suggested text)
>>
>> Thnx
>> y
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