Voting, procedures, costs, and privacy. Was: Re: [governance] Innovation

[Adam Peake]

At the risk of dragging out this historical 
stuff... there was quite a lot of work done on 
the at large election, a few of us came up with 
ideas for improvements, see 
<http://www.naisproject.org> (of people active in 
IGF members included Carlos, Izumi, Jeanette, 
Raul and me.)

Looked at national voting patterns, yes they existed, etc.

Very simple set of recommendations: re-do the 
elections pretty much as ICANN organized, only 
with safeguards against the capture and 
distortion that occurred in the first election. 
And suggestions for the creation of participatory 
structures (a less complicated version of ALAC, I 
think), the elections gave a vote but no voice.

Summary from 
<http://www.naisproject.org/report/final/010907abstract.shtml> 
(full report's 150 pages.)

ICANN, Legitimacy, and the Public Voice:
Making Global Participation and Representation Work
Report of the NGO and Academic ICANN Study (NAIS) - September 2001

Today ICANN faces the critical need to establish 
its own legitimacy before the broad community of 
Internet users affected by its decisions. NAIS, 
based on its nine-month study of last year's 
ICANN At-Large election, believes that ICANN can 
only achieve that legitimacy by providing more 
significant opportunities for a public voice in 
ICANN decision-making. The NAIS report "ICANN 
Legitimacy and the Public Voice" provides a 
detailed and practical framework for reform, 
including:

Open, Inclusive Membership

* ICANN makes decisions that affect users 
broadly. It should create and maintain an 
At-Large Membership, open to the Internet public, 
to provide a meaningful channel for informed 
input into ICANN policies.
* Inclusive approach - Membership should be open 
to adult Internet users who indicate their 
interest and complete a basic registration 
process. We believe the combination of online 
registration and postal return strikes the best 
balance between security, cost, and inclusiveness.
* No membership fee - ICANN should support the 
Membership for the next several years through its 
general budget. Those who benefit financially 
from ICANN should most fairly pay for the 
membership, a necessary component of ICANN's 
legitimacy. A fee would create serious equity 
problems, and raise less money than needed. We 
expect the cost of membership to diminish greatly 
after initial one-time authentication costs.

At-Large Membership: Participatory Structure

* A Membership Council, elected by members, will 
oversee activities to inform members and 
facilitate participation. A Secretariat 
(appointed by the Membership Council) will 
facilitate the flow of information within the ALM 
and with ICANN's other structures.
* Working committees will develop policy 
positions. Local, regional, and national 
associations will encourage participation 
globally.

At-Large Membership: Representation on the Board

* Direct elections for half of Board - Members to 
directly elect a number of Directors equal to the 
total number allocated to the SOs (i.e., 
currently nine At-Large Directors). Essential for 
balance of interests, check against bylaw 
changes, and part of basic historic bargain for 
support of ICANN.
* Regional and global elections - Directors 
selected one-per-region (recognizing importance 
of global representation) and remainder globally 
(importance of non-geographical representation.)
* Minimize fraud and capture - Each voting member 
should be tied to a real offline "personality" 
and have only one voting record in the At-Large 
database. Capture to be reduced by measures to 
restrict nationalistic voting patterns.

Accountability Mechanisms

* Structural constraints "fence" - To prevent 
unwanted expansion of its mission, ICANN should 
adopt limits on the scope of the Board's powers, 
including: bylaws and charter changes, explicit 
statements of user and provider rights, internal 
checks and balances within ICANN.
* Transparency and accountability - In addition 
to the At-Large Membership, ICANN should pursue 
additional mechanisms to improve the Board's 
accountability and transparency.
* Support for SO reform - Separate from At-Large 
reform, there is a strong desire by many in the 
community to reform the Supporting Organizations. 
We support reform of the Supporting Organization 
structure, but believe that such reform can and 
should be done independently of the At-Large 
Membership debate.

NAIS is a unique collaboration of ten research 
teams from around the world. This Report and a 
corresponding Executive Summary are online at 
http://www.naisproject.org/. We look forward to 
comments and questions.


History can be useful.  Re-writing history's bad.

Adam




At 9:29 AM +0100 11/30/07, Avri Doria wrote:
>Hi,
>
>but these procedures exclude everyone who has neither a credit card nor
>a bank account. i expect that is most people in the world.
>or are they not rich enough to count?
>
>i find this so much less democratic then an 
>organisation that is enabled, though
>adequate financing,  to reach out to local 
>populations who do not have any means.
>
>yes, i would prefer to see financing come from a ICANN funded foundation
>that was separate from staff, to eliminate the appearance of company union
>(i am not arguing that it is happeing, but  ICANN, or an company, remains
>open to the accusation).
>
>but the idea that the instruments of the rich and middle class should be used
>to determine who can vote, is rather frightening.
>
>additionally, again based on my life experience, 
>any vote that is not locally based,
>is little more then a  popularity contest based on puffery, illusion and lies.
>
>
>a.
>
>On 30 nov 2007, at 02.41, Karl Auerbach wrote:
>
>>Norbert Bollow wrote:
>>
>>>Sounds like it might be wise to establish the internet governance
>>>equivalent of genuine, independent unions.
>>>Given that such a new structure aiming to genuinely represent
>>>internet users would probably have to be operated on extremely
>>>limited financial resources (since otherwise it would quickly
>>>lose its independence through being financially dependent on
>>>its donors), how could it be set up to make it genuinely
>>>democratic and robust against forgery of votes etc?
>>
>>Let's not try to solve the internet voting 
>>problem in its general case.  In that general 
>>case one tries to permit everything from 
>>registration to voting to occur over the net. 
>>That means having means so that each human gets 
>>no more and no less than one ballot and one 
>>vote.  That's a tough problem to solve - in 
>>fact it may not be solvable.  And there is the 
>>separate problem of privacy of the votes so 
>>that voters can't be coerced.  That's another 
>>problem that is extremely difficult to solve.
>>
>>So, any election process needs to have its 
>>requirement softened and/or to tie itself to 
>>some external, hopefully already pre-existing, 
>>mechanisms.
>>
>>One such mechanism was used in the proposal 
>>made to ICANN for a constitutency for 
>>individual domain name owners.  In that case we 
>>tried to ride on the coattails of the credit 
>>card companies that most people use to pay for 
>>domain names.  That wasn't completely 
>>satisfactory - because while it largely solved 
>>the problem of fictitious created people (for 
>>the most part, but clearly not completely, 
>>fictitious people don't have credit cards that 
>>they've used to pay for domain names) but it 
>>did not solve the problem of one person having 
>>many cards and thus potentially getting 
>>multiple votes.
>>
>>Paypal's system of making small deposits to 
>>bank accounts is also an interesting method.
>>
>>At the end one may end up with a sieve of 
>>techniques that reduce, but not eliminate the 
>>problems of fictitious people or one person 
>>with multiple votes - in this case the question 
>>is when the risk of such problems becomes 
>>acceptably low.  Trying for perfection pretty 
>>much means that we will never get anywhere.
>>
>>The other problem - coercion of the internet 
>>voter as he/she casts his/her ballot - is a 
>>problem that perhaps we can solve by declaring 
>>it a non problem.  Maybe the issues faced in 
>>internet governance will be such that the drive 
>>to coerce does not become a real problem. 
>>Maybe - I'm merely suggesting that this 
>>question should be asked.
>>
>>There's also the notion of voter privacy during 
>>the canvasing process, i.e. the vote counting 
>>process.  Again, for the kinds of matters that 
>>arise in the context of internet governance we 
>>should ask whether this is a real issue or 
>>whether we can simply hire some people to do 
>>the counting and impose upon them some solid 
>>contractual obligations not to disclose what 
>>they see (and perhaps add a bonding requirement 
>>as well.)
>>
>>As for the costs - In the case of the company 
>>unions, the company paid for the meeting halls 
>>and the beer.  Of course that tended to 
>>influence the opinions of the members - 
>>particularly when more beer was provided.
>>
>>So, for a body to really be independent it 
>>needs to cover its own costs from a source that 
>>is disinterested in the outcome.  That sort of 
>>disqualifies the body of internet governance 
>>that the election is associated with.
>>
>>Assuming we've solved or are dismissing the 
>>coercion/privacy question, then the main cost 
>>is the registration - identifying who is whom - 
>>the actual voting itself isn't all that 
>>expensive.
>>
>>For example, when I vote my shares in a 
>>shareholder election the main cost is in making 
>>sure that I have a unique voter ID number.  
>>The actual dissemination of voting materials 
>>and the actual voting is done by a relatively 
>>simple web mechanism.  Again that's for 
>>corporate stuff where the privacy requirements 
>>are less than in a political election - and I'm 
>>hoping that internet governance voting has 
>>privacy concerns more on par with what is the 
>>norm in the corporate shareholder election 
>>rather than the typical political election.
>>
>>The bottom line is, however, that the costs, 
>>whether high or low, need to be borne by the 
>>body itself.  Otherwise there is systemic 
>>compromise of the integrity - it does not 
>>matter whether that compromise is real or 
>>perceived - of the system, i.e. an ALAC.
>>
>>		--karl--
>>
>>
>>
>>
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