[governance] Reinstate the Vote

[linda misek-falkoff]

Greetings,

These points are especially intriguing for those of us in other venues
working towards People's Assemblies, but without the ICANN / other
background as considerations.  When you have time, could you possibly list
some basic procedural steps, and / or substantive elements, characterizing
the systems you reference?

With appreciation, and *Respectfully Interfacing,* LDMF.
Dr. Linda D. Misek-Falkoff


On 11/24/07, Vittorio Bertola <vb at bertola.eu> wrote:
>
> Kieren McCarthy ha scritto:
> > It strikes me that if you ignore the torrid history and clash of egos
> over
> > the years, that the ALAC/RALO/ALS system is a pretty logical structure,
> > designed to be scalable and to ensure regional representation.
> >
> > But many of the comments on this list take as a presumption that this is
> not
> > a logical structure.
> >
> > I think everyone may be missing the bigger picture.
> >
> > For example, with this election argument: no one is pondering where the
> > candidates - or, rather, the best candidates - come from.
>
> I think that you got the key points of why we designed the structure
> like that, five years ago; I'm happy to see that, once one gets deeper
> into the complexities of the mechanism, the need for a "glocal" and
> multilayered system becomes self-evident.
>
> However, there are a couple of things that, IMHO, do not work well and,
> in hindsight, may need to be readdressed.
>
> The first is that the system tends to bubble up good politicians, but
> not good workers. Of course I am grossly simplifying, but during these
> years not many of the ALAC members were interested in rolling up their
> sleeves and producing policy input to ICANN, or being practical enough
> to focus on current end-user problems. Most of them were more interested
> in discussing high level political issues such as WSIS, relationships
> with the USG, or even more often the internalities of the At Large
> itself, i.e. procedural issues. Not all ALAC members see the ALAC as a
> service to the community at large - many see it as a way to promote
> personal opinions and their pet issues, and in a few cases people seemed
> only focused on self-promotion.
>
> The third is that the system is not representative yet, and in this I
> think that Karl has a point. Sure we'll not get millions of citizens
> directly interested in ICANN, and sure the disinformed and nationalistic
> (when not plainly random) votes of the 2000 elections were very far from
> actual democracy (more similar to practical democracy, the one that
> elects Bush and Berlusconi). However, the ALAC "bubbling up" system
> mostly failed in bringing up the issues that registrants really care
> about. There is a lack of end user participation at the bottom level;
> the ALSes were mostly meant to be "entry points" that could take care of
> identifying and gathering the users, and providing information to them
> in local languages; however, there has always been the idea that some
> form of general, individual-based election would eventually take place,
> or at least that a smart and committed individual, by entering the
> system at an ALS, could very quickly get to the top level, without being
> blocked by layers of bureaucracy and established leaderships. The ALSes
> and their leadership have too much power in the present system, and they
> tend to capture the scene.
>
> However, these are points that can be addressed, and I expect that
> (assuming that I continue participating in ICANN) there will be a chance
> to discuss them thoroughly.
> --
> vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
> -------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/  <--------
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