RE: [registrars] GNSO vote

["Tom D'Alleva" <tdalleva@bulkregister.com>]

Amadeu,
I completely agree with your statements below and found them to be quite
insightful.

Thanks,
Tom D'Alleva

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-registrars@dnso.org [mailto:owner-registrars@dnso.org]On
> Behalf Of Amadeu Abril i Abril
> Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 5:14 PM
> To: Ross Wm. Rader
> Cc: Bruce Tonkin; registrars@dnso.org
> Subject: Re: [registrars] GNSO vote
>
>
> Ross said mong many other things:
>
>  > Are there specific rules or procedures that allow Council reps
>  > to vote their as they see fit instead of voting according to
>  > the instructions of the constituency?
>
> Both your implicit position /they should not) and your previous
> suggestion that the three Names Council reps should cast their votes
> spitting them 2/3 for Mike and 1/3 for Alex for any time they were in
> the run seem a bit exaggerated IMHO.
>
> For one thing, and this is perhaps a linguistic/cultural devide, I was
> surprised at your interpretation of the meaining of a "representative".
> In our political cultures, there is a clear distinction between a
> representative and a delegate. Tha latter has a "mandate" to do whtever
> the ones giving the delegation might wish. In most European
> Constitutions in fact there is an express prohibition of the
> representatives (Cogressmen and the like) being subject to any
> "delegation", to any mandate by their electors. This is what we call,
> precisely, "representative democracy". No mandate, but obligation to
> represent the interests.
>
> Use of different cultural meanings of "representation" aside, ang going
> a level daown to the ICANN/GNSO structure, I think that the distinction
> makes perfeclysense. The GNSO has to express the views of the GNSO, not
> only the sum of the views of the different constituencies. The Names
> Council should therefore try to aggregate those view, and, well, it is a
> fact of life that this could never be done if the different Council
> members were bound to dead to the (supposed) votes in one direction or
> another given by the constituency.
>
> If we elect them is to serve the interests of our consituency, not
> necessarily to follow the strict literal content of a given resolution
> or vote.
>
> One level down, again: if this is true, IMHO and my view of
> representation in general and GNSO in particular, it is even more so if
> we talk about "indications", strawsman votes, "general sense". Etc. The
> preferences for the Board candidates was, precisely, a show of
> preferences. Your request of how thye reps should vote was your
> perception of the "general opinion", seconded by a handfull of registrars.
>
> It deosn't matter whwether all of them agrteed or not. It fails short to
> any standard of binding mandate, let's agree at least on that.
>
> Now let mes say waht I wanted to write before the elections started. I
> firmly oppose your proposal that the Names Council reps votes as a
> robot, in any automatic way. I'll try to explain why.
>
> On a practical side, the Names Council, let's admit it, is a strange
> political beast. You don't need to read the ICANNwathc piece Paul has
> pointed to in order to believe it ;-) There are, how would I say this,
> errr, lots of Marilyn Cades, Milton Muellers and other human beings
> which, when they interact, produce strange realtionships. Adopting any
> pre-stablished "blind" mechanism like the one you prooposed only leads
> to increased horse-trading around you. The message we sent our reps in
> this consituency was: try to get Mike, we like it more than Alex, but
> then we like both of them much more than any other. At least, this is my
> interpretation.
>
> Now, if you go there and decide beforehand that you will split votes
> that way all over the vote, you will see things like the ones that most
> probably happened: other Council members dropping their favorite
> candidates just trying to "prevent" somebody else to win. Vote
> aggragation "against" candidates happens in the Names Council much more
> often than aggragation "for a candidate. History shows that this was
> precisel y what heppened so far for "all" previous Board elections. A
> pity, certainly , but it works that way.
>
> Under these circumstances and you have two candidates, and you split
> votes from the beginning, you risk "both" candidates bieng easily
> outnumbered by a "countercoalition".
>
> Moreover, it often happens that each consituency has his own candidate,
> different form the other ones, but many might share a common "second
> choice", while frankly not wanting some f the other candidates. Your
> proposed mechanism would lead to this more generally preferred second
> choice eliminated, and then facing a choice among probably worse
> chices..... (if my recollection of the facts is not incorrect, it was
> precisely the decision of the registrars reps back in 99 to change the
> support of their number 1 pick, err, me, to their number 3, Alex, that
> eventually allowed them to put in the Board their whole slate of
> candidates).
>
> My message is: the registrars should expect their reps within the Names
> Council to do their best to get Mike, and then probalby Alex, to the
> Board in preference to any other candidate. But they should trust Ken,
> Bruce and Tom to be clever and honest enough to know how they should
> behave as for the mechanics of the elections of the 2 seats.
>
> If the consituency does not trust them, or dislike its methods, then the
> registrars should try to remove them form office. But their job is
> precisely interpeting how to get to the consituency goals with the Names
> Council procedures and realities.
>
> For the record: the registrar constituency is the only one that managed
> to get all of their supoorted candidates to the Board, in all four
> previous elections (well, in 2001 theconsituency and the reps were
> somehow split between Paul and myself, so ti was imposible to have it
> all with only one seat....).
>
> On another line, and this was in fact the reason that moved me to write
> this, the real drama in these and past elections is that, precisely, the
> Names Council fails to act as such. The discussions happen only at the
> constiuency level, and then, in all consituncies there is a pressure to
> get the reps trying to defend its interests. As I said when I told the
> Council that I was not running again, it would be really important for
> the credibility of the GNSO and the quality of the elections that the
> GNSO, and therefore the Names Council would be able to discuss as such
> about the names, the profiles etc. No way. Unfortunalty they are still
> cpative of this sort of "constituency" war, with no dialogue at the
> Council level, ecept for some horse trading :-(
>
> If we view the Names Council as s simple arithmetic sum of the wishes of
> each individual constiuency, let's sack al the Council members and let's
> use a simple, mechanical addition of consitucny votes. My bet is that we
> would see even more deadlocks that we see today....
>
> You see, some favor that Names Council should closely follow consituncy
> votes, polls, and even mail threads as simple delegates. Others, like
> me, would like having a Names Council that takes itself much more
> seriously than it does today, and is really up to the task of agregating
> and mediating veiws beyond the strict view of the most vocal members of
> each constituency. Because we should not forget that, while this
> consituency is alive and, has an evident incientive of representing the
> views of parties bieng genuinely interested in the ICANN process
> (without which, accredited generic doamin-name registrrs would simply
> not exist) some ohter consituencies are no more of the political arm of
> a very, very tiny fraction of individuals who use it for strict
> political reason.
>
> As for the results of the election, I will cngratulate whoever wins ;-)
>
> Amadeu, in his personal capacity
>