First I would
like to thank the committee for helping legitimize "self-nominated" candidates by
a changing their name to "member nominations". This is a small point, but an
important one if the committee wants to encourage members of the general public to
participate in the process as members of the committee. Along
these same lines, I would encourage the committee to eliminate the 10% requirement
[i.e. Recommendation 5] down to something more in line with standard ballot measures,
(e.g. 0.1% of the electorate), due to the exceeding difficulty a previously unknown
candidate would have acquiring the requisite nominations. (Even this lower
target can be quite a burden in a large electorate, as any petition worker for an
issue campaign could tell you).
Indeed, considering that the
candidate's proposed profile page will be the voter's primary source of information
on the candidate's qualifications, I do not see how a newcomer with even the most
compelling of ideas would catch the voters' consideration without becoming a candidate
first. By raising the bar to qualify as a candidate, the committee invites
an unintended, if not dangerous consequence: namely encouraging if not forcing newcomers
to implement traditional electioneering techniques in order to gain the requisite
supportive nominations for candidacy. These techniques in turn would require
large sums of money and therefore, much like the current system in the United States,
invite the appearence of corruption if not corruption itself. I am sure that
ICANN would seek to avoid such a result.
Rather, why not set a minimum bar
of 20 - 200 nominations based upon a 0.1% rule and let the voters weed out the chafe.
Otherwise, what is to distinguish ICANN's process from the same sort of ballot manipulations
which the two major political parties of the U.S. use to eliminate third party candidates?
Regarding
Recommendation 1:
It seems this recommendation is in part due to
the fear that regional interests will be trumped by one region's ability to exersize
it's will via majority rule. With all due respect to the committee, this is
not a new problem, and is of course the original reason that the bicameral legistlature
was adopted in the U.S. system. [The House of Representatives was based upon
population, while the senate was elected by each state legistlature to represent
each region on an equal basis, thereby protecting Rhode Island from the hedgemony
of a large state like Virginia.]
What the committee is proposing is
to create a senate without regard to the interests of the majority. Shouldn't
those who express the most interest in the process be rewarded for their interest?
I can only agree with the CC/CDT's assessment of the current recommendation that
it is unfair that the United States and Europe should receive a minority of the At-Large
seats when they are 4/5's of all current Internet users. This seems akin to
affirmative action for elective representation, despite the fact that any internet
user over 16 is free to register and vote. If, on the other hand, we have a
bicameral system, then no one will be able to push anyone around without due process.
Respectfully,
Publius