[governance] Reinstate the Vote

[Karl Auerbach]

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

Actually not.  The "North Americal" region was Canada, Bermuda, St 
Pierre, Miquelon, Greenland, and the US.

Mexico was carved off into "Latin America".  (Perhaps Mexico's old 
states of from Alta California and Texas ought to have been merged with 
Latin America as well? ;-)

> There were no rotation provisions

The terms of the elected board members were shorter (2 years) than the 
terms of other directors (mainly 3 years) and the boardsquatters 
(indefinite).

> 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.

Speaking as one who tried to "represent" 330,000,000 people, I had to 
abandon idea that I was merely a channel for those people.  I tried to 
synthesize what all of those people would want me to do and I tried to 
maintain a lot of contact so that I could hear and discuss matters with 
people, but at the end of the day, it was really my own decision.  It's 
not an easy thing to do.

> 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.

Given that ICANN tried to chop my legs off - metaphorically speaking - 
from the moment I was elected there really was no opportunity for us to 
smoothly fit.  Don't forget that I ended up having to bring a legal 
action against ICANN (which I flat out won) because ICANN engaged in 
unlawful activity to inhibit directors from doing their duties.

ICANN was formed on the promise that more than half of the directors 
would be elected by the public.

> 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.

"coordinated" - what an odd word to apply to that situation.  ICANN 
created some of the most amazingly bad systems to support that election 
- systems that collapsed under a transaction rate measured in terms of a 
few transactions per *minute*.  And some ICANN affiliates (some still 
being paid by ICANN) engaged in actions that could easily be construed 
as "fifth column".

Yet despite all of that, the elections worked.

Had ICANN not immediately reacted to shred the election process it could 
have been on the next round, two years later, much more efficient.

> 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?

The choices are:

A) no representation (the present scheme)

B) Faux representation (ALAC - a system that dilutes the representation 
through so many layers that it doesn't really exist)

C) Single level representation (what we did in year 2000) with periodic 
elections (and thus a chance to replace representatives who don't do the 
desired job.)

D) Direct elections on each matter (a system that I think we all agree 
is not very viable.)

Choice "C" worked.

		--karl--
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance