Re: [wg-d] WG Principles

[Karl Auerbach <karl@CaveBear.com>]

> >>We don't have corporate or organizational votes for Congress or the
> >>President of the United States.  Indeed, I know of no country that allows
> >>any but flesh-and-bone people to vote for governmental bodies.
> >>
> >So I ask, Why should any organization have a weighted vote in ICANN?  
> >People are far more important than organizations, and far more important 
> >than ICANN. We, the people, should decide on policy matters.  
> 
> What if:
> 
> - I don't have the spare bandwidth to participate in a particular debate

There are various answers to this.

First is somewhat elitist: Those who don't know ought not to vote.

The second is biblical: Are we our brother's keepers?

The third is pragmatic: How can we know how you would vote if you don't

have enough cycles to express an opinion by voting?


> - I am a member of an organization that *is* participating in the debate
> - The members of my organization have authorized one person to speak
>   on their behalf

An organization in this sense has an unlimited, unrestricted proxy for its
members.  Assuming even that one could count those members, it is not at
all clear that the members are even aware of the proxying going on in
their names.

I could be persuaded that there is merit in single vote proxies, i.e.
explicit proxies given for a single vote on a single issue on a single
date.  But that would be somewhat of an administrative pain.

But open ended proxies, which is what organizations are, are subject to
all the concerns I mentioned previously.


> Are there any circumstances, short of individual proxies, that would 
> allow that organization to carry with it into the debate the added 
> authority of the members who did not have the time to participate or vote 
> individually?

Certainly, in the debate an organization could be a strong voice.

But it will have to prove its voice by obtaining a show of votes by its
members.


> (Keep in mind that if the answer is "no" and that the alternative 
> solution is to ask all of an organizations members to vote online, then 
> we also need to address whether we have the technological capability, or 
> funding, to handle such voting or verify it.)

There are various questions that this raises:

1. Whether the electorate will really be very large.  (So far in the
entire ICANN universe, we don't yet have a very big electorate.)

2. Electronic voting systems are quite feasible.  The IDNO has one and
uses it.  And there are commercial voting systems.  I just used
http://www.proxyvote.com/ the other day for some votes for mutual funds I
have.

3. The hard part is voting credentials - creating them and distributing
them.  This step can be avoided if one is not particulary fearful of voter
fraud, something that we have no experience with yet.

4. If we require organizations to have internal mechanisms to count their
internal divisions and the strength of those, then we are simply pushing
the election burden onto the organizations.

5. How do we recognize when multiple organizations overlap and thus give
multiple votes to those covered by the overlap?

Overall, I find voting by individuals, and by individuals only, to the the
least troublesome, and certainly the most democratic, method.

		--karl--