Re: [council] Some Thoughts on the Elections Process

[Javier <javier@aui.es>]

Dennis,

The process that you propose sounds very good in general (see comments 
below), but cannot be applied now, as our time constraints are clear. If 
the nomination period is to be of four weeks, we would need to start it on 
September 17 (a week from today).

We need a mechanisms that will bring Directors into office by October 15th.


>Boundary Conditions:
>
>1  Nominations by the DNSO General Assembly.
>2  The electorate is the members of the Names Council.
>3  Three candidates to be elected.
>4  Each successful candidate to have "over 50% of the affirmative votes
>of the NC members".
>6  "...no more than one-half (1/2) of the total number of Directors, in the
>aggregate, serving at any given time pursuant to selection by the
>Supporting Organisations shall be citizens of countries located in any
>one Geographic Region."
>
>The electorate is the members of the Names Council
>
>This is clear.  However, it is also clearly the intent that the Names
>Council members consult the various Constituencies to get input on
>which candidates the Constituency favours.  This suggest that some
>formal mechanism of consultation of the Constituencies is required - and
>probably it will vary between Constituencies, given the disparate types
>of organisation of the Constituencies.  The most likely mechanism that
>will be and be seen to be transparent is a formal poll of the Constituency
>members.

The Names Council should not be involved on how the constituencies reach 
their agreements. It is up to each one of them to see if they want to 
decide on candidates or leave the choice to the Names Council.


>4  Each successful candidate to have "over 50% of the affirmative votes
>of the NC members".
>
>This Boundary Conditions is imprecise, since the meaning of "affirmative
>votes" is not specified.  I presume that it means that to be elected a
>candidate must reach a quota of 50% of the votes cast.  This of course
>means that the voting must cope with the situation where no candidate
>achieves this result on the first ballot, and successive rounds of
>balloting are possible (with or without eliminations/standing down), or,
>alternatively, that the voting mechanism allow for elimination and re-
>distribution of votes.

Having several votes per member (I have proposed three) will probably solve 
this issue. I case one of the top three candidates does not reach the 50% 
line. A single vote of the Names Council deciding if it sends the name to 
the Board can be used (if it receives the support of 50% of the NC).

We shoult try to avoid having to repeat elections because of this clause.


>I do not know enough about any other mechanism to make any
>judgement on its suitability to meet the necessary criteria.  I'm sure that
>the Electoral Reform Society of the UK, who the ccTLD Constituency as
>advisers, will have detailed information about all sort of elections
>mechanisms.
>
>I presume that the vote will be by secret ballot.
>
>4  Geographical Diversity:  "...no more than one-half (1/2) of the total
>number of Directors, in the aggregate, serving at any given time
>pursuant to selection by the Supporting Organisations shall be citizens
>of countries located in any one Geographic Region."
>
>The last of these Boundary Conditions is unfortunately imprecise and
>does not lead to a precise constraint on the Directors elected by the
>DNSO.  This means that whatever the results of the DNSO elections to
>the ICANN Board, there exists the possibility that the results of the (set
>of all) elections (by the SOs) will be rejected as not meeting this
>condition, and new elections required.  However, since there is no
>precise constraint on the elections, the process could continue
>indefinitely without resolution - except by some arrangement between
>the various sets of electors.

Most constituencies have an election system that always yields three 
candidates from different regions, such as the one that I have proposed for 
this case. It does need a mechanism to support the 50% affirmative vote 
rule, but it is only a couple more sentences.

javier