Re: [ga] Substance over rhetoric - a constructive challenge

["Roberto Gaetano" <ploki_xyz@hotmail.com>]

Vint,

>
>I am not sure I can dig out the information from archives but the
>whole voting process was considered a one-shot effort, to be followed
>by evaluation, which has now been done. For privacy and convenience,
>ICANN committed to limiting the use of the voting mailing list to
>election matters only. The proposals from ALSC suggest a new structure
>for at-large participation and that is why the invitation has been
>issued. There is no direct connection between the one-shot voting
>subset of interested parties and the invitation to create a new
>at-large structure.
>

I am not sure that there was consensus on the at-large election to be a 
bird-of-a-feather. There were at that time different points of view, and 
even if it had been stated from the beginning that an evaluation phase would 
have followed, there was substantial disagreement on the scope of the 
evaluation, which large parts of the Internet community considered as a mean 
for improving through learning by mistakes, considering that the concept of 
the at-large was not negotiable.

However, the problem, IMHO, lies now on the fact that, while the initial 
at-large election has been an overwhelming success, beyond the more 
optimistic (or pessimistic?!?) expectations, the participation to the 
current phase does not reach even a fraction of the numbers involved in the 
election.
You might remember that at an ICANN meeting (I think it was Yokohama, but I 
may be wrong) I raised the issue of what to do after the election with the 
at-large members, and the need to keep the momentum going, avoiding 
forgetting about the electorate until time for new elections. This is 
unfortunately exactly what happened.

Learning from past mistakes, I would therefore suggest that our effort be 
directed this time not only towards the mechanism of electing another set of 
Directors, but mainly towards building a permanent structure to coordinate 
users input in the process. Otherwise we will spend a lot of energies to go 
through a new round of election, but the situation will not substantially 
change, because the new At-Large Directors would not have any means to 
convey the users expectations and needs to the Board, and will therefore act 
in isolation from the body that elected them.

Regards
Roberto



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