[atlarge-discuss] Re: [atlarge-panel] draft motion on membership vote

["Richard Henderson" <richardhenderson@ntlworld.com>]

Vittorio

My comments interspersed inside asterisks ***** below...

----- Original Message -----
From: Vittorio Bertola <vb@bertola.eu.org>
To: <atlarge-panel@lists.fitug.de>
Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2003 8:38 AM
Subject: [atlarge-panel] draft motion on membership vote


I've tried to draft a motion on the membership vote. Please comment
and then let's vote it - due to the lack of feedback, in fact I don't
even know if the majority of the panel is for or against such vote.
If you could please show your opinion on this, maybe we'd discover that
we're wasting time.

DRAFT MOTION #D005: GENERAL MEMBERSHIP VOTE ON THE MISSION OF THE
ORGANIZATION

"The panel will organize a general membership vote on the following
subject:

***** RH: I don't think we should limit the subjects to this extent. I think
we should re-word it "vote on issues associated with our mission, in
preparation for the development of a mission statement. For example...*****

- which should be the mission of the organization, and particularly,
whether the organization should try to encompass impartially all At
Large participation and opinions or become a "party" with specific
opinions in the At Large world;

*****RH: this one (above) needs re-wording because as it stands I really
don't understand it*****

- whether and how the organization should participate in the RALO/ALAC
process;

*****RH: to be impartial, I suggest you counterbalance this with: " -whether
and how the organisation should develop a structure independent of ICANN and
in opposition to the RALO structure of ICANN" ...*****

- whether and how the organization should incorporate.

Such vote will be held by e-mail. Each member will receive at its
registered e-mail address a ballot, identified by an anonymous vote.
The ballot will contain a certain number of questions, not higher than
six,

*****RH: I don't think we should tie ourselves to an upper limit of six
questions... these are complex issues... we must be prepared to ask enough
questions to PIN DOWN the true wishes of the membership... and we should be
prepared to ask further questions if necessary... I just suggest you remove
the words "not higher than six"... *****


and a set of possible answers. Voters will have to return the
ballot to a given e-mail address, during a voting period not shorter
than seven days. The practical operations of the vote will be managed
by the Chair.

Questions and answers to be put on the ballot will be collected in a
public comment period that will last five days and will be announced
on the atlarge-discuss list; each member who wants to propose
questions may post them to the atlarge-discuss list during this
period. At the end of the period, the panel will collect all proposed
questions related to the scope of the vote, merge the similar ones,
and reduce them to the maximum allowed number,

***** RH: as I said above, we should not arbitrarily reduce them to six
questions if the questions that the members themselves want asked exceed
this figure. The important thing is to let the membership pose the
questions, and not create a process where the panel censors what is asked or
blocks questions just because they don't like them or think them irrelevant.
The panel should not get in the way of the membership posing and phrasing
its own questions. For this reason, I am sceptical about re-phrasing
proposed questions at all... if a member feels strongly that a particular
question should be asked, and chooses to word it in a particular way, we
should do our utmost to protect the actual wording the member has chosen,
and should avoid where possible the tendency to 'control' and
re-word...*****

 according to consensus
on the atlarge-discuss list; finally, the panel will approve the
questions and answers to be submitted to the membership, one by one.

***** RH: I'm even uncomfortable with this point... I understand there could
be a problem if a member deliberately submitted stupid and obstructive
questions to discredit the process, but I think as a "bottom-up"
organisation the members SHOULD have the freedom and right to phrase and
propose questions to the whole membership... I think the members themselves
should word and propose the questions... I don't think the panel should set
itself above the membership to say who does and who does not have a right to
ask their questions.*****

The ballot will contain a short introductory text explaining the
purpose of the vote. If the total size of the ballot will allow it,
very short statements in favour of the different options, made by the
supporters of each option during the public comment period, will be
included."

*****RH: Because these are quite complex matters, "very short statements"
may not be sufficient to help everyone make informed decisions. I don't
think we should limit people's right to advocate their cause and I strongly
urge the use of hyperlinks in the ballot against each question, resolving to
webpages where people are able to post their detailed reasons for or against
the question. This way, members can CHOOSE at a click to check out more
detailed reasons for their votes. I propose that each question in the ballot
is "sponsored" by one member, who then explains their advocacy on a link
page, and that sufficient time is allowed for opponents to post alternative
views on the same page.*****

*****RH: If we just decide to block some members questions and go ahead and
draft a mission statement based on the questions WE chose to allow to be
asked, then I'm not very happy with that process. I think we need to
recognise that we are NOT Icann and that we are trying to develop a very
different approach to the way we operate, which is truly bottom-up and
democratic in the full sense of allowing grassroots questions to be taken
seriously and facilitated.*****

*****RH: I believe we would be best served, as I have said already, by
inviting questions from all members, accepting their questions verbatim, and
then holding a kind of grand referendum aimed at really pinning down what
we - as a whole membership - democratically support. Our mission statement
and our policies should be driven by what the membership defines. For this
to happen, we should allow individual members to define their own specific
questions.*****

--
vb.                  [Vittorio Bertola - vb [at] bertola.eu.org]<---
-------------------> http://bertola.eu.org/ <-----------------------

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