A smaller electorate is more prone to being co-opted
by a fairly small percentage of its voters -- yes. But to me, that seems to be a
reason for trying to enlarge the electorate. You are asking "why are we electing
people on a geographical basis?" If you have had a look around the ICANN website
-- have you found a /single/ page in any language except English? If we want the
Internet to become a global medium, we have to take in account users from areas where
the Internet still is underdeveloped. I don't think you should worry about North
American interests not being take into account, and I don't see why groups of IP
addresses or ISPs make sensible electorates."Representation by Internet space,
not Real World space":
So if you can afford to be a member of 100 ISPs, you have
100 votes? The idea behind snail-mailing the PINs is to make it *more difficult*
(not impossible) to vote several times. In any large election it is impossible to
guarantee 100% flawless voting. I don't know how ICANN will deal with mailboxes,
but even so: It takes a lot more energy to set up enough mailboxes all across Venezuela
to manipulate the vote of the Latin American/Caribbean region than it takes to set
up mail accounts. And it will become more difficult the more members join ICANN At
Large.
I don't think the ICANN board members elected by the At Large members would
gain any legitimacy if any Avatar could vote for them. You can of course group countries
by language, GDP, Internet users etc., but I think such coalitions will emerge in
any case: If ICANN suggested an expensive modification of the DNS, poorer countries
would protest. If ICANN decided to make English the only UDRP language, non-English
users would protest.
In addition, here's what the 1998 DoC White Paper says:
"Management
structures should reflect the functional and geographic diversity of the Internet
and its users. Mechanisms should be established to ensure international participation
in decision making."
This was also due to international protests that the DoC
Green Paper did not adequately ensure global representation.