[governance] Reinstate the Vote

[Veni Markovski]

As chairman of the Membership Implementation Task Force for Eastern
Europe, I have to disagree with Karl's conclusions.

Nobody elected could claim they represent the 330 M or the 250 M, or
the 2 B people. Andy was a German choice, as Karl was the US one (and
US at this time was less than 300 M altogether).

Certainly the East Europeans were unhappy with the outcome, but also
certainly, if there are elections again, they most probably will have
the same result. One could go via the board list and see if people
from countried like Bulgaria, Kenya, Senegal, Chilie, etc. would ever
make it to that level.

We are constantly reminded that Karl was having problems with that
early ICANN, and he spent lots of time fighting to get access to
documents. But many forget that ICANN today is different from ICANN
yesterday. We can't live in the past forever. Today's ICANN has a
Newzealender as chair and an Australian as CEO. Today it is more
internationalized than yesterday, etc, etc. Karl may argue that today
board has access to information because of his case, but I think that
ICANN is much more open because of the fact it is a different, a
better organization. And with more involvement of the community
(including mandates for the people from this community) it will become
even better.

Veni

On 11/22/07, Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com> wrote:
> 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--
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