Since most people are not familiar with approval voting,
I would like to provide some additional information and explain why I think it would
be the best system for ICANN. Here are some links to articles about approval voting:http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/center.html
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/goodsoc.html
http://www.kellogg.nwu.edu/faculty/weber/papers/approval.htm
http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/altvote.html
Approval
voting was designed primarily to elect one candidate from a slate of three or more
candidates without a runoff ballot or complex elimination calculations. Each voter
under approval voting votes for as many candidates as he or she wishes, and each
such candidate gets one full vote from that voter. The candidate with the most votes
wins. So the "winner" is the most "approved of" candidate. The book "Approval Voting"
(Brams and Fishburn, Birkhauser, Boston, 1983) gives an extensive analysis of approval
voting. Among other things, approval voting allows voters a reasonable amount of
flexibility in their choices (any subset of candidates), it is simple to implement
and tabulate, it has a high propensity of electing the majority candiidate (one that
would defeat each of the others in pairwise majority contests) when one exists, and
it is fair to both voters and candidates. When there are m candidates, a vote for
about half has the best chance of being decisive, but only by a slim margin. If a
voter likes only one candidate, the most efficacious approval vote would be to vote
only for that one. If a voter detests one but can abide each of the others, the most
efficacious approval vote would be to vote for all but the detested one. Other voter
preferences give rise to at least two but less than m-1 approval votes.
Approval
voting has been adopted for elections of single candidates by a number of professional
societies, including the IEEE (Electrical Engineers), AMS (Amer. Math. Soc.), ASA
(Amer. Stat. Assn.), INFORMS (Institute of Operations Rsch. & Mgt. Sciences), and
the MAA (Math. Asn. of Amer.). In addition, the Econometric Society and the National
Academy of Sciences (US) use it in parts of their voting. Extensive tests have been
run by The Institute of Management Sciences and the Social Choice and Welfare Society
on approval voting in conjunction with a prior procedure. TIMS adopted approval voting
as a result, and SC&W Society is considering the same.
Unlike STV/Alternative vote,
approval voting does not suffer from nasty 'paradoxes' such as a winner turning into
a loser when new votes that favor the 'winner' are counted, and it is in general
much simpler.