[governance] Reinstate the Vote

[Karl Auerbach]

Jacqueline A. Morris wrote:

> Who's going to tell users about the vote? Who's going to sit with them in
> meetings and consultations and try to explain the issues?

Those same questions can be raised about any electoral process - and 
indeed about any externally imposed system such as ICANN's ALAC.

During the year 2000 elections several people around the world used the 
power of the world wide web to create very useful information centers - 
much richer than anything ICANN has ever done.

Within a few weeks the election interested enough people that nearly 
200,000 people made the effort to try to sign up to vote.  That was done 
entirely outside of ICANN and even despite ICANN.

As was demonstrated in year 2000 - if people are given a real voice in 
systems of government they will respond, channels of communication will 
form (that's what the internet itself is all about).

But it requires that people have a real role, not some facade, not some toy.

It is no wonder that ICANN's ALAC is a terrific dud - it offers nothing 
but a toy, it offers nothing that can be construed as a system through 
which internet users can hold the decision makers accountable.

ICANN's ALAC is a theatre play - users merely observe.  Elections are 
life - users participate.

In the few months of the year 2000 election we saw the creation and 
deployment of a far more vibrant system with far more faces and idea 
than has ever come out of the four+ years of ICANN's ALAC.

In year 2000 here in the US we held face-to-face debates on the west 
coast (Stanford University) and east coast (Harvard University) and had 
rather substantial open discussions, electronic and otherwise.  The 
costs were not high, none of us had to expend vast treasure, and the 
electorate had large opportunities to become informed and to interact 
with the candidates.

Several of us wrote our views - my platform is still visible: 
http://www.cavebear.com/archive/icann-board/platform.htm (and, sadly 
many of the issues of year 2000 remain issues today.)

I joined with two other candiates, Larry Lessig and Barbara Simons, to 
form a kind of mini-slate (why that is a good thing in 
single-transferable voting is a bit arcane, but it does create a 
potential advantage.)

What I am getting at here is that elections are not systems in which the 
outcome is handed to candidates on a silver platter.  Rather those who 
organize and campaign tend to do better than those who do no.

The system that ICANN created to replace elections is a paternalism, not 
unlike the systems imposed by King Leopold of Belgium on that country's 
African colonies, in which a privileged group condescended to create 
play pen systems of governance that satisfied the need for those in 
control to feel that were taking care of those who were less capable and 
denying to those people the ability to make their own choices.

Do we really want internet governance to be based on the paternalistic, 
even imperialistic, models of the 19th century?

Or do we want to recognize that each human being is entitled to have a 
fair and equal voice in his or her life and those systems of government 
that affect that life?

		--karl--

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