First of all, I really thank the ElCom for taking into
consideration some of the most widely accepted comments, such as the terminology
issue about "self-nomination" or the excessively high threshold for nomination. A
2% threshold (between 20 and 200) could be a reasonable threshold even with the "one
endorsement" rule, if there is a smooth and fair way for potential nominees to communicate
with members and solicit their endorsement.On the other hand, communication is
very important even in the member-nomination phase - otherwise, only candidates that
can count upon an externally controlled list of members will be able to lobby and
get to the ballot. Independent candidates wouldn't have a chance to get nominated,
because they just know a few members or even no other member than them.
The same
applies to the campaign phase, but it's pointless to worry about how candidates communicate
to voters in the campaign phase, if there are no provisions about communication in
the nomination phase, so that all independent candidates just get wiped away in that
phase. I think that every candidate should be judged by his/her own ideas and plans,
and not by the ability to have trusted people subscribe to the At Large program to
get him/her nominated. So the very same rules about communication that apply to the
campaign phase should also apply to the member nomination phase.
I think that all
candidates for nomination, and then for election in the campaign phase, should be
enabled to write a fixed-length presentation that gets sent once by E-mail to all
members of the Region, together with a link to their own page, where they can tell
everything they want. I don't think that asking people to go and visit Web pages
is a good idea - most people will not do it, so again only lobbying candidates, that
have a list of members and can get to them directly, will get endorsements.
I have
some more general comments on the election process, though this is possibly not the
right place and time to expose them, since it does not seem feasible to me that something
can be changed for this year's elections.
I have some
fears about how European governments and people in general will judge an "European"
election in which 80% of the electorate is German. I don't think that this will make
relationships between the EU and ICANN smoother. Though I admire the fact that German
people seem to be much more interested in such important questions than other European
people, I think that some form of sub-regional representation should be sooner or
later implemented. Just as my first thought, every country should elect a representative,
and then all the representatives for each single region should vote to elect the
At Large Director for the region, maybe weighing their votes according to the population
of their country. But then, such indirect election could conflict with real members'
will, so... well, something should be worked out. There will be time to discuss this,
I hope.
I also agree on a comment I read here - it *does* seem strange that Regions
with 10'000 At Large members get the same level of representation in the Board as
Regions with 100 members. If At Large members should elect nine members, then I suppose
that the most populated Regions are going to get more of them next round, so while
I can accept that the first five Directors come each from one Region, I think that
the other seats will have to be split among Regions according to the global distribution
of members.
That's it for now - comments welcome.