[governance] Reinstate the Vote
Jeanette Hofmann
jeanette at wzb.eu
Thu Nov 22 16:36:06 EST 2007
The year 2000 elections were full of flaws. Many of those flaws had to
with the fact that none of the organizers had any experience with
designing elections, let alone elections on a global scale. If elections
had been accepted as a legitimate way of choosing board members, this
could have been a learning exercise. There were certainly enough people
interested in helping making it work.
Those interested may have a look at the recommendations of the At Large
Study Committee: http://atlargestudy.org/
or the work of NAIS of which I was a member: http://www.naisproject.org/
National parliamentary elections are the wrong benchmark for ICANN, so
is the criteria of global representativeness. Most studies on
border-crossing, transnational forms of democracy point out that
participation outside of the nation state follows sectoral logics. This
means, only a minority of people takes enough of an interest in
participating in a process such as ICANN.
The lack of representativeness is not only a problem for the individual
users but also for governments and the private sector. None of them can
claim representativeness in the traditional, national sense. The bi
question is how legitimacy can be achieved despite this lack of
_numerical_ representativeness. This is a problem that concerns all of
us, governments, corporations, NGOS, not only those who are in favor of
elections.
My point is that elections should not be dismissed on the grounds that
they don't achieve the same representativeness as national elections. We
are all operating outside of national forms of democracy. We are all
forced to come up with inventive solutions that accommodate the volatile
constituencies we are faced with.
What I dislike most about the current ALAC structure is that it doesn't
allow for individual participation. The feature that more or less
characterized the first model of ALAC got eliminated. The opportunity
for direct, individual participation is one element I find crucial in
both national and transnational contexts.
jeanette
Carlos Afonso wrote:
> 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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>
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