[council] GA Chair elections

[Elisabeth Porteneuve <Elisabeth.Porteneuve@cetp.ipsl.fr>]

Good morning in New Year,

You may recall that I was requested during the last NC teleconference
held on 19 December to provide the current procedures for the DNSO
GA Chair election.

The Nov-Dec 1999 election is described step by step in
    http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/1999.DNSO-GAchair.html
The procedures are in:
    http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/19991126.DNSO-GAchair-procedures.html

In summary:
1. GA Chair and Alternate mandate: one year
2. Election process: 3 weeks, as below
   - one week for nominations by the DNSO GA members
   - one week for endorsements by the DNSO GA members
   - one week for the election by the NC among the proposed nominees
     who received at least 10 endorsements
   ==> A watchdog committee is formed to help detect and cure any instances 
       of fraudulent activity in connection with the nomination process. 
3. GA membership is defined as below:
   A member of the GA shall be any natural person who at 
   the time of the nomination (or endorsement as set forth below) is:
          subscribed to the GA-ga or GA-announce lists; 
          subscribed to a working group list; or 
          a Names Council member; or 
          a member of a DNSO Constituency. 
          Note: A person with multiple email addresses is only counted once.
   ==> Membership problems:
       a. Not all constituencies have a list of members available
          on line; some constituencies claim to be assotiations of
          organizations, asserting their membership is as large
          as the developped tree (practicaly it means unlimitted).
       b. Since mid-1999, the GA keeps a voting registry, open to all
          GA members, http://www.dnso.org/secretariat/rosterindex.html
          To vote upon GA matters one shall subscribe to the 
          voting registry. The voting roster (but not e-mail 
          addresses) is publicly available -- currently 269 persons.
          Access to the GA voting registry is from the 
          http://www.dnso.org main page. 

Recently the DNSO GA Chair suggested the GA not only nominates, but also
selects its Chair and Alternate.

Elisabeth