[At-Large] [APAC-Discuss] FW: My Issues with the At-Large Election Process

Sivasubramanian M isolatedn at gmail.com
Wed Nov 3 07:12:09 UTC 2010


>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Danny Younger [mailto:dannyyounger at yahoo.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2010 6:11 AM
> To: ICANN At-Large Staff
> Subject: My Issues with the At-Large Election Process
>
> [Please forward to all the appropriate at-large and RALO lists]
>
> Dear members of the At-Large community,
>
> By now you are aware that in the At-Large Board Director selection process
> 43 Statements of Interest (SOIs) were received by the Board Candidate
> Evaluation Committee (BCEC).  Three of those SOIs were from current and
> sitting members of the ALAC; forty were not.  By an amazing coincidence only
> current and former ALAC members were selected for the candidate slate.  On
> this basis alone, there are some that might wonder whether the at-large
> director selection process has, in fact, been captured.
>



>
> Others will look at the fact that the BCEC was entitled to select as many
> as 7 candidates (which would have allowed for more than one gender to be
> considered, or would have allowed for some "non-insiders" to be considered),
> and yet the BCEC for some unfathomable reason decided to narrow the field of
> otherwise qualified candidates down to only the three that were sitting or
> prior ALAC members...


If this choice of the three candidates has been by design, then there must
be specific candidate predetermined to be moved up to that position. A
victory is being engineered. Danny, is this what you imply?



> still another reason to suspect capture.
>
> We know that the ICANN Board Governance Committee had concerns about
> capture; their meeting minutes state:  "Reviewed the proposed At-Large Board
> member selection process and potential risks of capture identified within
> the process." While their assessment was that the risk of capture was low,
> the preliminary election results tendered can readily lead one to a
> different conclusion.
>
> One also has to look at the fact that 49% of all SOIs were rejected before
> the process even began (ostensibly because they were deemed to be too
> incomplete to proceed further).  In what other election process are that
> many candidates rejected out of hand before the election even begins?
> Clearly there is something seriously wrong with this picture.  If the
> Statement of Interest application form was so poorly written that almost
> half of all applications were improperly completed, then it is an
> inescapable conclusion that the process itself was seriously flawed.
>
> We know as well that ICANN Staff has provided a certain degree of support
> to some of the 22 candidates that hadn't fully completed their SOIs.  At
> issue is why Staff didn't offer comparable support to the other 21
> applicants who were initially rejected.
>
> Additionally, we are confronted with the fact that the at-large director
> selection process was announced on the internal ALAC-related lists on 21
> July, but press releases in Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), French, German,
> Portugese (Brazilian), Russian and Spanish weren't issued until 26 August --
> you will note that the deadline for applications was only 11 days thereafter
> (on 6 September).  One has to wonder how many SOIs weren't received owing
> simply to the the short time span between the international press release
> date and the final application deadline.
>
> One also has to wonder about how much of an advantage was thereby given to
> "insiders" that were aware of the process for a full month longer than
> applicants who first heard about the election when the Press releases were
> issued in languages other than English.
>
> Recently, the ABSdt announced a revised timeline that requires the RALO
> petition process to be completed on or before 7 November, yet no e-mail
> notices have gone out to any of the candidates to advise them of the
> timeline changes.  Is this fair to the bulk of the candidates that may not
> even know of the existence of the ABSdt mailing list?
>
> All of us intuitively understand that a flawed process can certainly yield
> a flawed outcome.
>
> So what do we do at this point?
>
> While I understand the rush to have an at-large director seated (just as I
> understand the rush to have new gTLDs launched), I also understand that as a
> community we are better served by "doing it right" than by adhering to the
> results of what may be perceived as a tainted or seriously flawed election
> process.
>
> Yes, I recognize that it is always exceedingly difficult to stop a moving
> train, but I remain of the view that this election process has already been
> damaged to the degree that it should be stopped dead in its tracks for the
> good of the at-large community.
>
> I understand that these views may not be popular with some, but this
> election process, in my opinion, has proven to be not as fair and properly
> orchestrated as it could have been.
>
> best regards,
> Danny Younger
>
>
>
>
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