[ICANN-EU] Measuring Election Success

[Rob Courtney <rob@cdt.org>]

To the ICANN-Europe group:

Now that At-Large voting's about to end, the question before us will be 
whether this election can meaningfully be termed a success. If we're going 
to come up with precise answers to that question, we're going to need to 
identify the sub-questions that need to be addressed once we've achieved 
the benefit of hindsight. To that end, CDT and Common Cause have put 
together the attached set of metrics for election success. We anticipate 
that these will help us and others distill out the core elements of this 
process, both in the last ten days and in the last several months. I'm 
submitting them for the group's consideration.

r

* * *

ICANN’s Elections:
Potential Metrics for Success
October 2000

The election soon to be held by ICANN--the Internet Corporation for 
Assigned Names and Numbers--is an unprecedented experiment in online 
democracy. Policymakers and the media will watch its outcome closely; it 
will bear strongly on ICANN’s ultimate legitimacy and promise as a model 
for Internet governance; and it will be the cornerstone of ICANN’s own 
upcoming assessment of the At-Large membership. A major question for those 
of us who have supported and commented on the election will therefore be: 
_How do we measure the success of ICANN’s first-ever elections?_

GOALS OF THE ELECTION

Measuring success will be difficult because of the numerous and competing 
goals for the ICANN elections. Common Cause and CDT cataloged these 
competing goals in our March 2000 report _ICANN’s Global Elections: On the 
Internet, For the Internet_:

“While there appears to be little consensus on the ultimate role of the 
election, several major themes have emerged among the responses that we 
have heard:

·* To give a voice in ICANN’s governance to those bound by and affected by 
ICANN’s decisions  a diverse population of potentially tens of millions of 
people all around the world. A major goal for many is to ensure that ICANN 
acts “with the consent of the governed.” Others articulated this goal as 
“providing a voice in ICANN to those not already represented in the 
Supporting Organization structure.”
·* To select high-quality board members capable of fulfilling ICANN’s 
responsibilities for managing and ensuring stability of essential technical 
systems.
·* To fairly represent the diverse interests of Internet users worldwide, 
as expressed by an engaged and educated At-Large electorate.
·* To avoid “capture” of the board through disproportionate representation 
of any one organization or interest group.
·* To complete the election by September 30, 2000 in order to allow the 
appointed At-Large board members to be replaced, and to inject an elected 
voice into the board’s ongoing decision-making as quickly as possible.”

Satisfying all of these competing demands is almost impossible, as we 
further noted:

“ICANN faces the daunting goal of seeking a fair ballot, free from capture 
or fraud, from a potential electorate of millions of Internet users 
worldwide who have little knowledge of ICANN and little understanding of 
its mission, in order to select a high-quality board of technically-capable 
members  all by September of this year.  *Realistically, without 
substantial changes to the proposed process, it is difficult to see how 
this is possible.*” (emphasis added)

Even the election modifications made since that time do not address many of 
these fundamental tensions. It is almost certain that, given the 
constraints under which ICANN is operating, the election will be less than 
a complete success in some dimensions.

SOME METRICS FOR SUCCESS

Within the context of these daunting goals, there are several areas where 
we might measure the success of the election. These include:

1. BROAD PARTICIPATION--While only a small fraction of eligible voters have 
registered, the election should nevertheless have a large number of voters. 
ICANN set a low goal of 5000 members; over 150,000 have registered 
worldwide and over 75,000 have activated their memberships.  A key question 
will be how many participate in the campaign debates, and ultimately vote.

2. FAIR ACCESS TO THE BALLOT--ICANN must offer fair and open access to the 
ballot. An evaluation of the nominations process should judge whether there 
was real access to the ballot by alternative candidates, not just those 
nominated by a Board-dominated committee.

3. HONEST AND SECURE ELECTION PROCESS--There must be no hint of dishonest 
activity such as fraud, corruption or abuse of authority. Fairness will 
depend on the accurate and secure counting of votes, equal treatment of 
voters and of candidates, and impartiality of election officials. More 
difficult questions include verification of “one-voter-one-vote” and the 
enforcement of reasonable campaign rules, which have not been well articulated.

4. MEETS TIME AND RESOURCE LIMITATIONS--The election has a constrained 
budget and a hard November deadline. We should recognize that meeting the 
deadline, fairly and within budget, is a major goal.

5. ELECTION OF HIGH-QUALITY DIRECTORS--Many will view the end product as 
the ultimate measure of election success: Are the election winners 
high-quality people who will ably manage ICANN and effectively represent 
the interests of the Internet community?

Further metrics may be much more difficult to measure, but ultimately quite 
important:

6. FREEDOM FROM CAPTURE--It is important that no single interest or group 
of interests be able to unfairly dominate the elections. There has been 
evidence of national domination of regional elections. Measuring other 
forms of capture  by particular corporate interests, for example  will be 
much harder. Capture remains a difficult and unanswered question.

7. A REPRESENTATIVE AND ENGAGED ELECTORATE--Number alone are not enough. 
ICANN’s electorate and Directors should also be somewhat representative of 
the various interests of the numerous stakeholders in ICANN’s decisions, 
including minority viewpoints. The electorate must be educated and engaged 
as well; an uninformed electorate without a clear understanding of ICANN’s 
mission or issues could be destabilizing or lead ICANN to overstep its 
authority. Creating an engaged electorate from among the potential voting 
pool remains a major challenge.

CONCLUSION

We have a combination of metrics for ICANN’s elections, some easily 
measured, others highly subjective. It is clear that ICANN will fall short 
in some of these areas, but the above criteria provide some measure of 
successes and failures likely in this experimental, first-ever ICANN election.