COMMENTS OF
THE CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY
AND
COMMON CAUSE
ON
PROPOSED ELECTION RULESJuly 7, 2000
The Center for Democracy and Technology
and Common Cause submit these comments on the recommendations made by the ICANN Election
Committee regarding the upcoming At-Large Membership election. In general, we support
these recommendations. We would further like to acknowledge the effort made by the
committee to seek public opinion on the rules in a timely fashion. We hope that future
work on the election will continue along these lines.
RECOMMENDATION 1: REGIONAL
VOTING — Regionally based elections are more resistant to capture on an international
level and are a key to geographic diversity on the Board of Directors. Given the
disparities in voter registration, we believe that a regional process is best able
to ensure the voices of those Internet users living in regions with relatively small
At-Large memberships.
RECOMMENDATIONS 2 AND 3: CANDIDATE DISCLOSURES AND COMMUNICATION
— We support the recommendation that ICANN post informational web pages of all candidates
in the At-Large election, and believe that the biographical and disclosure information
found there will be helpful to the electorate. We particularly applaud the recommendation
to establish public question and answer forums. We hope that these forums will be
open for access by all, and that they will be minimally moderated, so as to promote
active discussion of and with the candidates, and thorough evaluation of their positions.
It is difficult to balance the interests of candidates in open membership lists with
the privacy interests of members. On balance, we agree that candidates should not
have access to the At-Large membership lists directly.
RECOMMENDATION 4: BALLOTING
SYSTEM — The proposed Alternative Voting System is "intuitively fair", and is well
suited to the particulars of a large-scale online election, with many candidates
vying for one open seat in each region.
RECOMMENDATION 5: MEMBER NOMINATION REQUIREMENTS
— We strongly agree with the Election Committee’s recommendation that the Board revise
the current member nomination process; we particularly agree that the 10% regional
support requirement is prohibitively high. We endorse a substantially lower threshold
of two percent, with a twenty-endorsement minimum and no cap on the number of member-nominated
candidates that shall be on the ballot. We also agree that each At-Large member should
have the right to endorse more than one candidate.
CONCLUSION
CDT and Common
Cause support the Election Committee’s Recommendations on Election Procedures. We
hope that the ICANN Board will adopt them in determining final election procedures.