[gnso-consensus-wg] Nom Comm appointee roles

["Metalitz, Steven" <met@xxxxxxx>]

 Reflecting on our useful discussion yesterday re role of Nom Comm
appointees to the GNSO council:
One reason given was a tie-breaking role in voting.  I went back and
looked at the "GNSO Council voting patterns 2005-2008" document prepared
by staff in Paris.  Of the "28 voting events taken by roll call and
showing identifiable votes per constituency, where the outcome was not
unanimous" (these were the shaded entries in the document), I did not
find any which would have been tie votes but for the votes cast by Nom
Comm appointees.  
I did find two votes out of 28 in which (if I counted correctly) the Nom
Comm appointee votes created a 2/3 majority of those voting which would
not otherwise have existed.  Neither of these involved a recommendation
being sent to the Board where the presence of a 2/3 supermajority on the
Council would have made a difference. One was a vote on whether to send
a letter regarding travel funding (3 Jan 08); the other was a vote on
one of the two proposed formulations of the purpose of Whois, which was
intended to guide future work on policy development but not (at that
point) to be sent to the Board (12 April 06). 
It is always possible that councillors changed the votes they would
otherwise have cast to avoid having the Nom Comm appointees break a tie.
I don't know any examples of that; perhaps some of the council members
on this list do.  
I found the council voting patterns chart a bit hard to follow (you need
to double the votes in the first two columns to account for weighted
voting, abstentions are not noted, etc.) and I certainly might have
miscounted, so I would welcome anyone else checking my work, but what I
saw suggests that the tie-breaking role of Nom Comm appointees has not
been significant, at least for the past four years.  
This leaves the role of these appointees in "bringing new voices" to the
table, or in providing expertise that the Council needs but that
constituency reps cannot provide.  As we discussed to some extent
yesterday, if these roles are important, we should consider whether they
can be fulfilled in other ways, such as through representation of
At-Large on the Council, or through appointed experts who could serve on
the council in a non-voting capacity.   

Steve

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