I have the following comments and suggestions.1.-
Geographical Division.
While I can or I can not agree with this division, I think
it's important to clear the extent of each area, for example, and being a little
"close-minded", the area designated as North America does not corresponds to the
Geographic Area with the same name, by definition, North America gathers Canada,
US, and Mexico, but Latin america also includes Mexico. So I think it should be better
to number the regions than to use a name that may cause confution. ( like DVD
industry).
2.- Representation and Regions
If the intention of the ICANN at large
membership is to be representative, I think current procedure is quite unfair.
Just for a start it is obvious to anybody that US concentrates the largest number
of users on the Internet at this point, maybe Europe has a close number to US and
Canada, but Latinamerica has much less users at this time. So it's unfair to have
a representative for Latinamerica and another for US and Canada, they are not in
equal circumstances and they do not represent a similar number of people.
While
it is important that smaller regions are represented, the importance on each director
will always be determined by the number of people he represents, so it is quite important
that the director's board of the ICANN at large meets this two aspects, represent
the largest ammount of people and also represent all interests (including smaller
regions, countries, etc;).
This also applies to the suggestion of splitting US
into 2 areas I have read, if there are several candidates that get elected by the
number of votes despite their region, there is no need to split any of the actual
regions.
So I suggest that insetad of electing 5 directors, the number
should be increased to 7 or 8, one for each region (5) and another 3 among the candidates
that did not win but gathered a high number of votes, just as an example, if there
a number of cadidates for US & Canada region, the one with the largest number of
votes will be elected for that region, but the candidate which occupies the second
place may have more votes actually than the candidate who won in Latinamerica.
Thus what I suggest is that the first 5 places are elected by the propoused procedure
and the other 2 or 3 are occupied by candidates from all regions that did not get
elected on their own region but have gathered the largest ammount of votes. This
is called in Mexico proportional representation. And over the voting procedure,
each individual member could vote twice, one time for his favorite regional candidate
and the second one for his favorite candidate despite region (could vote for the
same candidate both times). The first vote is used to elect the first five
directors the second is for the last 2 or 3.
3.- Representation and Number of Candidates.
There
is not any given number for how many candidates could be included in the ballot,
if the minimum support required is the 10% then, it could be 10 candidates at most
plus the ones nominated by the Nominating Committee, but there should be a minimum
number (I suggest 1) of self-nominated candidates and a limit to the candidates nominated
by the Nominating Committee, because there is a chance for a certain region to have
no self-nominated candidates.
So I suggest that the rule for accepting a self-nominating
candidate (9b) must be something like:
9. To obtain a place on the final ballot,
an individual seeking self-nomination must meet the following conditions:
a.Support
from 10% of the At Large Members in her/his geographic region, as defined by the
ICANN Bylaws; and
b.Support from residents of at least two (2) countries.
c.
If there are no individuals seeking self-nomination that meet the above two conditions,
then the single individual with the largest support (the bigger number of supporters)
will be incuded in the ballot.
Why ?. Because otherwise, the Nominating Comitee
could be imposing his candidates or at least it might be taken by members in this
way.
4.- Declining, Absence and other issues.
The currect rules does
not contemplates the case of a declining candidate during the election process, and
worst, what happens in case of special conditions like illness, death, etc;