On Fri, Aug 18, 2000 at 08:12:38AM +0200, Dany Vandromme wrote:
>>> * It is certainly useful for a NC rep to have a substitute to attend a
>>> meeting or a tele-conf when he cannot attend it himself. But after
>>> attending a NC conference call to-day, I noticed that other constituencies
>>> afford easily to have not all NC rep participating (even through proxies).
>>
>> Dany: the replacement candidate concept is NOT the alternate concept that was
>> proposed last year. A replacement candidate cannot attend NC conference
>> meetings, etc. That has been ruled as being against the ICANN by-laws. A
>> replacement candidate's sole purpose is to fill in for an elected NC member
>> who resigns. And the use of a replacement is voluntary.
> -
> I saw the difference between the alternate and the replacement. My feeling
> is that, for a fair vote, all candidature should be equivalent.
> If some ballot have 2 names rather than one, the result will be affected
> anyway by the combination effect (that effect can be + or -), depending if
> the second name will attract or repulse. I am sure that a second name will
> not be neutral.
> Second, having some ballot with two names and others with one name is not
> fair, even if the second name is not mandatory. I understand that your
> proposal is aimed to make transition phase (in case of resignation)
> seamless, but to me, this affects the vote itself.
>
> Last, your proposal will induce an over representation of the 2-names
> region (not in the NC meeting, since we are talking of replacement
> proposal) in the running of the constituency.
>
> I keep a strong preference for using the next adcom member as interim,
> before organizing a new election, in which the second has a good chance to
> be elected, if he has shown a good voice, presence and activity as a
> regular member of the constituency.
There are several other arguments against Milton's proposal.
1) It muddies the voting decision. For example, a popular candidate
could pick an idiot as an alternate (as in George Bush's choice of Dan
Quayle as a vice president). Under those circumstances the electorate
has to evaluate the probability of the primary candidate leaving
office. In practice, people tend to ignore the idiot and vote for the
primary candidate, because, after all, it is rare for the primary to
leave office early.
2) It adds an odd mechanism to deal with what should be a rare
occurence. The conventional solution is to appoint a temporary
replacement and hold an election.
3) The claim that somehow this scheme is more representative is false.
To return to the earlier example, except for the case of diehard
partisans, people who would vote for a Bush-Quayle ticket would not
necessarily vote for a Quayle-Bush ticket.
4) That is, the proposal has as an underlying assumption partisan
behavior, rather than collaborative or consensus-building behavior.
That is, instead of helping ICANN become a more consensus-oriented body
(it's avowed role), the approach is to preserve the power of a
particular faction.
5) The role of the alternate is confused. On the one hand, Milton said
that the alternates would be effectively new officers in the structure
of the NCC, but on the other hand, there is no defined role for them
anywhere.
-- Kent Crispin "Do good, and you'll be kent@songbird.com lonesome." -- Mark Twain
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Aug 18 2000 - 11:11:39 PDT