[governance] Reinstate the Vote
Carlos Afonso
ca at rits.org.br
Fri Nov 23 18:04:15 EST 2007
Dá-lhe, Jacqueline!
:)
bs
--c.a.
Jacqueline A. Morris wrote:
> Dear Milton
> I think of myself in many ways, not purely as anything.
> If you pay attention to the LAC mailing lists, I am identifying strongly
> there as a Portuguese descendent and cultural Latina. In some other places,
> I identify strongly with my African heritage, and in other fora as a member
> of the female sex. I can continue to define myself in many other ways, but
> the examples already given should be quite sufficient to indicate that the
> base premise of your response is false.
> And considering that I'm part Portuguese and have a lot of family in Brazil
> - it would be very strange for me to consider Brazil as "other" - it would
> be like considering myself "other" to myself!
> Jacqueline
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Milton L Mueller [mailto:mueller at syr.edu]
> Sent: Friday, November 23, 2007 12:20
> To: jam at jacquelinemorris.com; governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Subject: RE: [governance] Reinstate the Vote
>
> Jacqueline:
> Just a question: why do you think of yourself primarily as a member of a
> "country" and not in other terms, i.e. as a particular type of Internet
> user, with specific economic interests, or as part of a group, which may be
> transnational, sharing certain beliefs about how the internet should be
> governed?
>
> Why do you view "Brazilians" as "the other" and therefore as someone who
> will necessarily vote as a bloc "against" the Caribbean? It seems to me that
> the kind of "balancing" you propose legitimates and perpetuates the very
> national divisions that the Internet should be overcoming.
>
> I am all for limits on pure majoritarianism, which is why democratic
> governance mechanisms need to be tempered by "constitutional" mechanisms
> that protect individual rights. But I see no reason to privilege national
> identities or divisions in any global governance mechanism. If you do want
> to base things on nationality, then stick with the joys of
> inter-governmental institutions like the ITU, WIPO or WTO, you will get
> plenty of it there ;-)
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Jacqueline A. Morris [mailto:jam at jacquelinemorris.com]
>
>
>> Caribbean at 14 million or so will never be able to outvote Brasil alone,
>> far less the rest of LA. So what's the incentive for participation in an
>> election of this nature?
>> What do we think about a system of proportional representation to an
>> electoral college (like Danny's new NomCom) - but a big one so that even
>> the smallest country (Like Barbados with 300k people) can have maybe 1
>> member and thus a voice - and then have that college vote for the 5 or 9
>> people that will sit on the Board?
>> That seems as if it would solve the problem of size, as well as the
>> problem of not having representation at all - if in a place, we have a few
>> people voting in the first election, we still have a voice in the college
>> with our minimum 1 position, and as internet penetration increases, and
>> users get more interested and more educated, we have more weight as more
>> people vote.
>>
>> But then, none of these people will be truly "representative" of all the
>> millions and millions - so "direct representation" by voting in any way
>> will never be fully "representative".
>>
>> So - is this even something that we should be focusing on or should we
>> focus on getting people more educated and more active and participating,
>> thus getting closer to an informed global user constituency and away from
>> the little cliques of the cognoscenti (us) who currently "represent"? This
>> informed constituency can then leverage its size into power to demand
>> changes.
>>
>> Jacqueline
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Carlos Afonso [mailto:ca at rits.org.br]
>> Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2007 15:37
>> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Jacqueline A. Morris
>> Cc: 'Milton L Mueller'; yehudakatz at mailinator.com
>> Subject: Re: [governance] Reinstate the Vote
>>
>> 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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