Questions about Noncommercial Stakeholder Group organization

[Milton L Mueller]

Greetings members,

Here at Cairo we have had some very useful discussions with Board
members, ALAC and the business constituencies about the shape of the new
Noncommercial Stakeholders Group. We have promised to give the Board
Governance Committee a rough draft of the charter for the new NCSG by
the end of this month. 

There were a couple of issues or decisions that were controversial or
just difficult to know what is best. We wanted to solicit your opinion
about that. Please give us your input on the items below

 

Two of the questions relate to electing GNSO Councilors. The other is
just a question about organizational structure

 

In the future we will need to elect 6 GNSO Councilors.

 

Voting method for GNSO Council representatives

=====================================

V1) Should each member give one vote to 6 candidates? 

V2) Should we allow members to concentrate and distribute their votes,
e.g., assign all 6 votes to one candidate, or 3 votes to 2 candidates,
or 2 votes to 3 candidates?

The concentrated vote method would increase the chances that minorities
with strong preferences would be represented on the Council. It would,
as a result, decrease the solidarity of the NCSG as a voting bloc and
reduce the need for Council candidates to try to represent the
stakeholder group as a whole. Most of the members meeting here favored
Option 1 because they wanted Council members to have a broader appeal,
but at least one favored the concentrated method. There are also some
concerns about the procedural complexity of concentrated voting.

 

Geographic representation

====================

There are 6 Council seats and 5 ICANN geographic regions. What
geographic representation rule do we follow? 

Two different options were proposed:

G1) A simple rule that no region can have more than two (2) council
seats

G2) A rule that at least 4 regions must be represented in the outcome. 

I think there was agreement that the GNSO Council position is important
and very demanding, so no one should get elected to it solely because of
their regional origin; they should compete with candidates from other
regions on the basis of their qualifications and commitment to the job.
So that is why we did not just say that the Council seats should 

 

Rule G1 would mean that you could have a minimum of three regions
represented on the Council (2 from each of 3 regions)

Rule G2 would mean that 4 regions would be represented, but one region
might have as many as 3 of the 6 seats

 

Executive Committee - Policy Committee Structure

======================================

Here we are just asking for comment on organizational structure. 

 

We seemed to come to an agreement on: 

An _Executive Committee_ that consists of:

*	Chair
*	A Chair-appointed Secretary-Treasurer
*	Two others elected by constituencies (one vote per constituency)

The executive committee handled administrative tasks such as membership
reviews, fund allocations, meeting agendas, voting

 

A _Policy committee_ that consists of:

Elected GNSO Councilors

One representative from each constituency 

The Policy Committee

*	Governs statements issued in name of NCSG
*	Initiates policy proceedings on behalf of NCSG
*	Can provide guidance to Councilors - upon request, no need for
vote

 

What do you think of this structure? 

Apologies for the length of this message, but we do need your input on
these issues

 

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