Re: [ICANN-EU] Measuring Election Success

[Alexander Svensson <svensson@icannchannel.de>]

First of all, congratulations to Andy -- this really
is a quite impressive victory!

Then some quick notes based on Rob's notes on
election success:

> 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.

34,305 activated members voted. We are of course left to
speculated whether the other 41,878 activated members didn't 
like the nomcom or the member-nom candidates, whether they 
were unhappy with the procedures or whether they just didn't
care as much as the voters.
BTW, judging from the North American six rounds voting process
(http://www.election.com/us/icann/region5.html) most voters 
seem to have ranked all candidates and not only a few.

> 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.
Member-nom candidates won in Europe and North America,
nom-com candidates won in Africa, Asia/Australia/Pacific and
Latin America/Caribbean. But limiting the number of candidates
to seven and pre-nominating five of them in Europe obviously
made it very hard for potential member-nom candidates.

> 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.
Although there were no strict campaign rules, at least 
none of the European candidates seems to have violated 
standards of fairness. As to the election process: Has 
anyone heard of people boasting to have voted twice or 
the like? (I haven't.) 
BTW: The election had been extended until 0:30h GMT to
ensure all votes are registered.

> 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.

Difficult indeed. 81.6% of the (first) votes in the European 
region went to the three German candidates. As we all know,
57.0% of the European applications were from Germany. We have
neither activated members statistics nor voter statistics
by country. But let's keep in mind that this is only one
perspective -- e.g. Alf Hansen has received more than three
times as many votes as there were membership applications
from Norway, so it's pretty obvious that the mechanisms are
somewhat more subtle!
As Patrick already remarked, there is also a clear 
underrepresentation of women at ICANN. I don't know whether
Géraldine Capdeboscq and Linda Wilson will stay until 2001;
Esther Dyson has already announced that she will be among the
five initial At Large directors leaving this year.

> 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.

Another difficult one. Improving information about ICANN
will remain a task both for ICANN itself and for all of us.

Best regards,
/// Alexander

_______________________________________________________
  ICANN Channel              http://www.icannchannel.de