Voting methods and decisions

[Konstantinos Komaitis]

Mary thanks for your report (I felt like I was present) and equally thanks to Milton for his subsequent email.

I am also in favour of option 1 - simplicity seems to be working best in all cases. I fully support Milton's structure proposal - especially with regards to the Policy committee I think we should definitely retain it (as per Mary's summary of posing the possibility of doing away with the PC). It is vital for the NCGS to provide input through an officially structured Policy Committee to the GNSO, which might actually pose some sort of estoppel (highly unlikely I accept this) to ICANN's policy making endeavours (e.g. new gTLD proposal).

Konstantinos

Dr. Konstantinos Komaitis

Lecturer in IT&T Law, Panellist,
Chair Membership Committee,
Global Internet Governance Academic Network,
University of Strathclyde,
The Law School,
141 St James Road,
Glasgow G4 0LT.

tel:+44 (0)141 548 4306
fax:+44 (0)141 548 3639
email: k.komaitis at strath.ac.uk
http://www.law.strath.ac.uk/staff/bio_sharepoint.aspx?id=75


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Non-Commercial User Constituency [mailto:NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On
> Behalf Of Milton L Mueller
> Sent: 05 November 2008 16:00
> To: NCUC-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
> Subject: Voting methods and decisions
>
> From Lehrstuhl Weber:
> > 1. Voting method: In my opinion it would be a proportionnate solution
> if a > member would have 6 votes, but could not allocate more than 2
> votes to the > same candidate. This allows a certain concentration and
> does not cause the > risk that a few members could heavily influence the
> outcome by agreeing to > give six votes to the same candidate. This
> solution would also be slightly > more flexible than V2 (by allowing for
> example 2 votes for a candidate and > 1 vote for 4 other candidates).
>
> Funny, that is exactly what I proposed. However, the feeling at the
> meeting was that it would be extremely complicated to convey this mixed
> solution in a ballot. A confused voter is a serious problem and can
> cause challenges to the legitimacy of the entire election.
>
> From Cheryl Preston:
> > I attended each of the meetings discussed in these "minutes," and
> several
> > observations are necessary.  First, with respect to the discussion on
> > Milton's proposed charter, when the notes speak of "the group" as
> > "agreeing," it means that there were 7 persons present and the votes
> on
> > many items were 6 to 1.  Seven in not a quorum.  These are not binding
> > votes.  It would inappropriate at this time to assume that any of the
> > discussions or conclusions represented in these minutes is fixed or
> final.
>
> In fact, Cheryl, there were no votes AT ALL in the meeting, because that
> is not how things are (or should be) decided. You were there when we
> decided to pose these questions to the list; we did so because no
> decision should be made without membership input. And it is a fact noted
> in my description that there was one person who favored cumulative
> voting.
>
> --MM