In my opinion the effect of Kent's proposal is to disenfranchise the people
who elected the original NC member.
The fact is, people from different geographic regions often have different
views on policy issues. That is why we have the geographic diversity
requirements!
The GD requirements make it clear that, for example, someone from North
American is unlikely to be the best representative for someone from Africa,
and vice versa.
Now, in Kent's proposal, if an elected NC member from North America is
unable to attend a meeting, the people who elected that person will be
represented by a person from Africa or Europe or whoever is next in line on
the AdCom. It is possible that the people who elected the original NC member
do not even know the alternate, have never met, and do not support his or
her views.
Of course, this works both ways. If the original NC rep is from Africa and
is unable to attend the meeting, the Africans may be represented by a North
American or a European.
This seems to be to be self-evidently undesirable. An alternate is supposed
to be someone who stands in the place of the original NC rep and represents
the views of the ELECTED person they are substituted for.
We need to think a bit more carefully about the political situation here. If
the Non-commercial constituency was a cohesive group of people who all knew
each other and shared the same basic outlook, the AdCom-method of
designating alternates would work. But we are not cohesive.
I have proposed a voting method that would allow all members of the
constituency to distribute their votes across geographic regions. No one
seems to be very interested in it, because everyone is afraid that people
from other regions will play too big a role in electing "their" NC
representative. What does this tell us? It tells us that geographic
differences are very important, and everyone seems to want to preserve those
differences in the NC.
Very well. If you want to preserve geographic representation on the NC, then
you must vote for alternate method #1, which allows a geographical NC
representative to select an alternate that supports their own views.
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