[council] PLEASE READ - Draft Statement on Election Process

[Dennis Jennings <Dennis.Jennings@ucd.ie>]

Dear  Colleagues,

Here is a draft (I hope final) statement on the election process that I 
would like to release after the start of today's teleconference.

I have consulted with Andrew on this, and he is reasonably happy with 
it, I think.

Please read and be ready to discuss briefly today at 15:00 CET.

Thanks
Dennis
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DNSO Names Council Statement

The Names Council has received several expressions of concern that the 
process of nominating candidates for election by the Names Council to 
the ICANN Board had not followed the Names Council's published rules.

The Names Council considered this issue during its teleconference on 15 
October 1999.

The published rules state:  "The Names Council has resolved that a 
candidate, in order to be nominated must have the support of, at least, 10 
members of the General Assembly.  For this purpose, anybody who is 
subscribed to the General Assembly mailing list, the Announce mailing 
list or the list of one of the Constituencies of the DNSO is considered a 
member of the General Assembly.  As the Announce and General 
Assembly list are open, anybody wishing to participate in the 
nomination process may subscribe to one of these lists and be 
considered a member of the General Assembly".

The Names Council has been asked to verify that all nominated 
candidates were supported by at least ten individuals who qualify as 
members of the General Assembly, as required by the published rules.

In response, the Names Council resolved the following:

The rules published for nomination and support of candidates to be 
considered for election by the Names Council to the ICANN Board were 
not intended to be a significant barrier to the identification of candidates 
for this election.  The purpose of the rules was administrative -- namely, 
to ensure that the Names Council was not swamped with an exceedingly 
long list of nominees with only marginal support in the DNSO 
community.  As such, the rules were loosely written so as to allow any 
person on any list of members of any of the component parts of the 
DNSO to support a candidate.  The rules, of their nature, are not strong.  
In addition, the membership criteria in the rules are not verifiable under 
the DNSO's existing Listserv management software, because: (1) the 
membership of all such lists is not fixed and varies from time to time as 
individuals subscribe to and unsubscribe from them, and (2) no formal 
list membership tracking mechanisms are in place at this time.

In light of the fact that compliance with the rule cannot technologically 
be verified, the Names Council took the view that those candidates who 
received votes during the election were, by definition, thus recognised 
as having support within the DNSO community.  Further, the Names 
Council agreed that any candidate elected as a result of the election 
process undertaken by the Names Council had, by definition, 
substantive support within the DNSO community.

The Names Council decided that the rules for nomination and support of 
candidates by the DNSO for election to the ICANN Board must be 
reviewed and may need to be revised for future elections.  The Names 
Council committed to conduct such a review in good time before the next 
elections took place.

<end statement>
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Dennis M. Jennings
Director, Computing Services, University College Dublin.
Address:  Daedalus Building, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland
E-mail:  Dennis.Jennings@ucd.ie
Telephone:  +353-(1) 706 7817
Fax:        +353-(1) 706 2362