Re: [ICANN-EU] RE: prefered access for ICANN nominees

[Adrian Suter <adrian.lists@wortrei.ch>]

At 13:08 15.08.00 -0400, Andrew McLaughlin wrote:
>It seems we're not communicating properly here.  As with nearly any
>corporation or society (in the Internet context, consider the IETF, ISOC,
>ARIN, etc.), the Nominating Committee is asked to perform the function of
>screening and recruiting potential candidates and to put forward a set of
>names for the ballot.  In addition, candidates that were not chosen by the
>Nominating Committee have the ability to get onto the ballot by
>demonstrating a minimum threshold of support through an open call to the
>membership for endorsements.
>
>You seem to be unhappy about the role given to the Nominating Committee, but
>it's actually a very standard mechanism.

IMHO, this part is. It's the fact of limiting number of the self-nominated 
candidates to two that isn't.

The limitation to a total number of seven candidates per region, including 
the ones selected by the Nominating Committee, gives the Nominationg 
Committee the power to reduce the number of self-nominated candidates, 
*although* they might be able to demonstrate a minimum threshold of support.

If ICANN wants to limit the number of candidates, a fair procedure would 
have been to fix the number of self-nominated candidates independently from 
what the Nominating Committee brings forward. "A maximum number of five 
candidates proposed by the Nominating Committee plus a maximum number of 
five self-nominated candidates" would have left ICANN with a maximum of ten 
candidates per region - perfectly manageable IMO.

The procedure that ICANN has chosen gives me (and I'm sure: not only me) 
the impression, that ICANN wanted to give its Nominating Committee the 
power to limit the number of self-nominated candidates by putting forward a 
list that already contains almost as many candidates as possible.

Even if this was not the intention, it is the result. The chance for 
European candidates to be included into the list for the final ballot has 
been limited by the Nominating Committee. A candidate might fail to be 
included into the list for the ballot even though s/he has more support 
from the @large-members of his/her region than the candidate of another 
region that will be on the list, just because there were more places left 
in that region.

BTW: did the Nominating Committee in theory have the right to set up a list 
of seven candidates for one region, thus preventing every self-nominated 
candidate from entering the final ballot?

Adrian