Re: [ga] Request for a Clarifying Vote

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@ntlworld.com>]

Don't get me wrong. I'm enough of a realist to recognise that a further poll
to clarify last week's vote is unlikely in the extreme. I don't think enough
people really want to take things further.

But I have been trying to make this point:

It is totally unclear what people were primarily voting for last week. This
lack of clarity dissipates the effects of the votes, and was probably the
purpose behind introducing the second "softer" version.

Analysis of the voting may not determine motives, but it is statistically
clear that a large majority of those who voted for "negotiated reform" were
only too happy to go for a Re-Bid directly, which to me suggests that Motion
2 was simply their "fall-back" option.

Critics say: How can he possibly know that?

Exactly - but a clarifying vote would make the wishes and opinions of the GA
sharp, determined and clear.

I prefer the Re-Bid option
I prefer the Self-Reform option
I oppose both options

ONE vote (X) to be permitted.

(Where those terms above refer in more detail to Motions 1 and 2 in this
week's vote.)

This would clarify what people's preferences really were.

More depressingly, I feel the GA's "consensus" mantra is a kind of
lip-service to a management method that ICANN uses again and again to blur
awkward issues and avoid the democratic case of the ordinary user-majority.
Why is "consensus" more important than democratic will?

Where has consensus management got us? To vague nominating committee
concepts which put people in place to put people in place... which people...
the people who will sustain the ICANN board's self-perpetuating control.
Where has consensus management got us? To a lack of democratic
accountability. Where has consensus management got us? To an imbalance in
favour of various "constituencies" such as the registrars and registries, at
the expense of the interests of ordinary users. Any doubts that the
interests of the ordinary users are sacrificed in the name of
registrar/registry appeasement (and income) and the blurred consensus which
means anything goes and no-one is really accountable... just take a look at
the .info shambles and the registrar abuse with .biz (which ICANN can find
no consensus to regulate or control). Where has consensus management got us?
To an organisation which is mistrusted and held in contempt, an organisation
which dares not engage in open dialogue when the questions are awkward, an
organisation which operates in opaque and mystical ways, and shuns the votes
of ordinary people.

Don't argue "consensus" to me, Jamie!

That's the way ICANN blurs everything. Can't you see? It's blurred the 2
motions already. I'm asking for clarity. I'm saying which motion do people
want most of all? What's so wrong with that?

But no, I don't expect to get a further vote.

Just as I don't expect Denise Michel's at large initiative to be anything
other than an exercise in control and damage-limitation.

What's needed is clear water and plain speaking. No cosying up and trying to
reform from the bottom-up. That's ICANN's joke isn't it? They pretend
everything's developed from the bottom up, when the political reality is in
fact "top down". Stuart Lynn and his allies (or successors) have their own
agenda, and they have their power base. You can negotiate and reason all you
like. But they're dominating this WORLD RESOURCE and they'll decide the
agenda and run - as a petty fiefdom - a resource which in truth belongs to
the whole world.

THAT'S why so many people voted for an outright Re-Bid.

Because only radical change and the overthrow of a discredited leadership
can alter the political reality.

I'd just like CLARITY that the GA, primarily, above all, and overwhelmingly,
wants a Re-Bid rather than anything else.

I sincerely believe that is the democratic will of the GA membership. But
you can't prove that without a vote.

Richard Henderson



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