14 July 2002

ELECTIONS OF A PANEL FOR ICANNATLARGE.COM

Given the fact that the deadline for the current interim panel of icannatlarge.com is approaching, a new election for a longer term panel for the icannatlarge.com effort is now starting.

The purpose is to select a group of members that represent different views, cultures and geographical areas inside the At Large movement, have some technical and organizational skills, and are willing to devote a significant amount of their time to this effort in the next 12 months.

MANDATE OF THE PANEL

The panel shall be composed of eleven members of the icannatlarge.com effort.

The mandate of the panel will be that of running the organization in all its aspects, including but not limited to:

1. guiding an outreach campaign so that the highest possible number of active users of the Internet who might want to participate in ICANN are informed of the effort and can register on icannatlarge.com if they wish, and that the membership grows to a point where it can be considered sufficiently representative of such users;

2. continuing the public and open discussion of Bylaws for a new At Large Membership organization, trying to gather consensus, consider all inputs, unify all efforts, and put together in the shortest possible amount of time one or more proposals of Bylaws to be then submitted and approved by a majority vote of the membership, and after such approval, formally incorporate the organization;

3. defending the role of the public for what related to Internet matters currently governed by ICANN, and guiding a discussion about whether and how the organization should take part to the internal processes ICANN will establish for public input and participation;

4. managing the icannatlarge.com website, directly and/or by appointing webmasters;

5. managing to hold the election of the next officers of the organization before the term of the panel expires.

The panel shall expire and conclude its work after twelve months from its election.

OPERATIONAL DETAILS AND TIMEFRAME

All persons registering on icannatlarge.com before the end of Monday 15 July 2002 (UTC / GMT) will be entitled to vote. All voters will receive their ballot by e-mail at the e-mail address they used when registering to icannatlarge.com.

Those members who want to nominate other members or second nominations should post a nomination/second message in the "Second Elections" forum on the website or to the atlarge-discuss mailing list by the end of Monday 15 July 2002 (UTC / GMT). To be included in the list of the candidates, nominated members will have to accept the nomination by posting a message in the same forum, or by sending an e-mail to the election watchdogs or to the atlarge-discuss mailing list, before the end of Tuesday 16 July 2002 (UTC / GMT).

Candidates will be asked to provide details for a candidate page that will be set up on the site after finalizing the candidate list. A public debate about the candidates will be hold in the atlarge-discuss list and in the "Second Elections" forum of the icannatlarge.com website until July 20.

Voting will occur between Sunday 21 and Saturday 27 July 2002 (UTC / GMT).

VOTING SYSTEM

Each voter will receive by e-mail a ballot message, which needs to be completed by adding a X inside the square brackets [ ] near to the name of the candidates that the voter wants to be endorse, and then to be sent back to the originating e-mail address. More detailed instructions will be found in the ballot message - we recommend all voters to read it carefully.

Each voter will be allowed to endorse up to eleven names taken from the list of the candidates. Voters should support all candidates that seem best fit to the position, so that those who seem suitable to most members will be chosen. Overall results will not be made visible to voters before the booth is closed.

The eleven candidates who receive the highest number of votes will be elected, provided that they have received at least 15 votes; if there are not eleven candidates above this threshold, the number of members of the panel will be reduced accordingly.

Ties (if any) will be solved by ordering names by the number of candidates of the same ICANN Region that received more votes than the tied ones (the lowest first, so to help diversity among regions), then the same by country.

The voting system will be kindly provided by the DNSO Secretariat - so the current panel wants to thank Elisabeth Porteneuve for this. Elections will be overviewed by the following watchdogs (whom also we want to thank):

• Bret Fausett <fausett@lextext.com>
• Walter Schmidt <walts@dorsai.org>
• Alexander Svensson <svensson@icannchannel.de>

PANEL RULES

The panel will choose, by majority vote, a Chair, with the role of coordinating the discussion and the meetings. If agreement on a Chair cannot be reached after seven days from the election, the candidate that received the highest number of votes will be the Chair.

All decisions in the panel will be taken by explicit online vote on the panel mailing list, called by the Chair and lasting at least two days (unless a final result is reached before). Decisions will be taken by majority of the non-abstaining votes expressed, provided that at least five members of the panel expressed a vote.

If any of the eleven seats in the panel becomes vacant (ie because of resignation, lack of suitable candidates...) it will be filled by the first non elected candidate from the original election, provided that he received at least 15 votes. If no suitable candidates are available from the original election, and the number of remaining members in the panel is lower than five, a new election will be held to fill the vacant seat.