Hi, Eric--
I left your full posting in this message, because it certainly bears
repeating. What you have missed, to make matters worse, is that the At
Large membership won't even be able to hold direct elections. Instead, it
will be voting for 18 members of an At Large Council who will SELECT the
nine At Large Directors.
Of the members of the At-Large Council, at least one and not more than
two per region shall be elected directly by the residents of ICANN's 5
defined geographic regions, with each regional Council member elected by
the residents of his or her region. The remaining Council members (no
more than eight) shall be elected globally by all ICANN At-Large members.
A candidate for a regional At Large seat must be a citizen of a country
located in that region. No two members of the At Large Council elected
from the same region shall be citizens
of the same country.
The purpose of this is apparently to create a non-statutory membership
(insert legal mumbo, jumbo here), which means that ICANN will be immune
from being subject to a derivative action by its members.
So, to summarize, the individual representation must be 5,000-strong and
geographically diverse to be able to vote, and when that threshhold is
achieved, it chooses not its board members but its intermediated
representation, which is regionally diverse, and they, in tern, select (not
elect) representatives to the board who have not been able to participate
in the process of recommending policies to be submitted to the board
through the DNSO.
The suggestion of an imtermediated At Large Council was presented by board
member George Crew on August 25. Although the staff report on At Large
membership floated the idea of an At Large Council
<http://www.icann.org/santiago/membership-staff-report.htm>, that was to be
a Baord-appointed committee to new committee to "assist in ongoing AL
membership issues such as outreach, recruitment,
authentication, and election procedures." Thus, this substantive change in
the At large membership structure was NEVER posted in advance for public
comment and feedback, in violation of ICANN's own bylaws.
Great piece of work there, ICANN. Can't you possibly make things more
convoluted?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Eric Weisberg wrote:
>Andrew McLaughlin wrote:
>
>> The ICANN Board of Directors held its third quarterly
>meeting in Santiago,
>> Chile, today. The Board passed a number of resolutions,
>including the
>> following:
>>
>> ...
>> - Implementation of At Large Membership
>>
>
>"Implementation" is an interesting descriptor for what was
>apparently done.
>Some might call it "newspeak."
>
>I understand that voting will only occur when 5,000 people
>sign up for
>membership. A small fraction of that number have
>participated in the
>IFWP/ICANN process, to date. And, there is nothing for
>individual members of
>ICANN to do but vote for part of the board. If only 4,999
>sign up, they won't
>get to do that.
>
>The resolution provides:
>
> 1. The At-Large membership shall be geographically
>diverse, broadly
> representative of the Internet user community, and shall
>consist of at
> least 5,000 individuals.
>
>And, to make the objective even more difficult to achieve,
>the board
>
>
> FURTHER RESOLVED [99.__] that, ...the Board reiterates
>its
> determination that
> the At Large membership will ultimately be expected to
>fund its
> operations (including
> the election process)...
>
>Considering the history of participation, the limited role
>contemplated for
>members, the likelihood of membership fees (or poll tax) and
>the subject matter
>of the organization, I now feel like the black law professor
>from Harvard who,
>after passing the English literacy test for voting in
>Mississippi in the '50s,
>was tested in Chinese. He astounded the registrar by
>accurately reading the
>passage upon which he was tested:
>
>"This black man is not going to vote in the state of
>Mississippi."
>
>Does anyone read the board resolution differently? What
>have I missed?
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