April 2002

Following the discussions on the ALSC Forum list, the icannatlarge.com website, and other lists, an election for an interim panel for the icannatlarge.com effort is now starting.

The purpose is to select a group of members that represent different views, cultures and geographical areas inside the At Large movement, have some technical and organizational skills, and are willing to devote a significant amount of their time to this effort in the next few months.

The panel shall be composed of seven members of the icannatlarge.com effort.

The mandate of the panel will be limited to:

1. guiding an outreach campaign so that the highest possible number of active users of the Internet who might want to participate in ICANN are informed of the effort and can register on icannatlarge.com if they wish, and that the membership grows to a point where it can be considered sufficiently representative of such users;
2. guiding the public and open discussion of Bylaws for a new At Large Membership organization, trying to gather consensus, consider all inputs, unify all efforts, and put together, after no more than two months from its election, one or more proposals of Bylaws to be then submitted and approved by a majority vote of the membership;
3. establishing a secure voting system for the Bylaws to be approved and subsequently for the first election of the officers of the new organization, and managing to hold such two votes before its expiration term;
4. managing the icannatlarge.com website, directly and/or by appointing webmasters.

The panel shall expire and conclude its work after three months from its election, or after the officers of the new organization have been elected, whichever comes first. In case that the officers' election cannot be held before the expiration date, a general majority vote of the membership will decide whether to extend the panel's term by three more months, or to elect a new interim panel according to this charter. In any case, if at the expiration date there are at least 5000 members, the panel's term cannot be further extended.

All persons registering on icannatlarge.com before the end of April 19 (GMT) will be entitled to vote. By April 23 all enrolled persons will receive by e-mail their login data for the voting system and the instructions about how to vote. E-mail reminders might be sent during the voting period.

Members who subscribe this charter and thus want to candidate themselves to the interim panel will have to express their intention to do so by posting a message to the "Candidacies" thread in the "Elections" forum of the icannatlarge.com website, by the end of 11 April 2002 (GMT). Only members that do so will be allowed to be voted.

Those who want to nominate other members should post a nomination message in the "Nominations" thread in the "Elections" forum, or contact them directly and invite them to accept the nomination. To be included in the list of the candidates, nominated members will have to accept the nomination by posting a message in the "Candidacies" thread before the end of 15 April 2002 (GMT).

A public debate about the candidates will be hold in the "Elections" forum of the icannatlarge.com website on April 16-23. The electoral campaign will then stop.

Voting will occur between Tuesday 23 April (7:00 UTC) and Saturday 27 April 2002 (12:00 UTC).

The vote will be overviewed by a group of well-known trustees whose names will be announced shortly.

Each voter will be allowed to endorse up to three names taken from the list of the candidates. The seven candidates who receive the highest number of votes will be elected, provided that they have received at least 15 votes; if there are not seven candidates above this threshold, the number of members of the panel will be reduced accordingly.

Ties (if any) will be solved by ordering names by the number of candidates of the same ICANN Region (as amended per ALSC proposal) that received more votes than the tied ones (the lowest first, so to help diversity among regions), then the same by country.

At this stage, it is impossible to provide anything more than a simple online voting system, or to strictly verify the real identity of the people who registered. Though we are aware of these problems, we think that it is necessary to bootstrap this effort to be then able to set up systems with a higher degree of authentication and security. It is necessary for all those who participate to trust the current organizers of the icannatlarge.com effort about the fact that elections will be conducted in a fair manner.=

The panel will choose, by majority vote, a Chair, with the role of coordinating the discussion and the meetings. If agreement on a Chair cannot be reached after seven days from the election, the candidate that received the highest number of votes will be the Chair.

All decisions in the panel will be taken by explicit online vote on the panel mailing list, called by the Chair and lasting at least two days (unless a final result is reached before). Decisions will by taken by majority of the non-abstaining votes expressed, provided that at least five members of the panel expressed a vote.

If any of the seven seats in the panel becomes vacant (ie because of resignation, lack of suitable candidates...) it will be filled by the first non elected candidate from the original election, provided that he received at least 15 votes. If no suitable candidates are available from the original election, and the number of remaining members in the panel is lower than five, a new election will be held to fill the vacant seat.