[EM] ICANN Elections

[Rob Lanphier]

Spotted this on Lorrie Cranor's e-lection mailing list....
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Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 17:32:58 -0500 (EST)
To: e-lection at research.att.com
From: Lorrie Faith Cranor lorrie at research.att.com
Subject: ICANN At-Large Election Study

Yesterday I participated in a very interesting roundtable on the
ICANN at-large elections. Sponsored by Common Cause and the
Center for Democracy and Technology, we discussed the proposed
process to elect representatives to the ICANN board from around
the world. There are a number of very interesting issues 
including, how do you identify voters (the plan is to allow any
Internet user to register to vote), the logistics of the voting itself,
what method should you use (a majoritarian system? a
proportional system? an electoral college?), and how does the
nominating process work. I'm not sure the panel came up with
any definite solutions, but there was certainly a lot of concern
about the proposal on the table. The ICANN election has the
potential of being a VERY BIG election, as every Internet
user may be eligible to vote. It's not clear that there are that
many people who know about ICANN or would be interested
in voting, but it seems to me a well-planned get-out-the-vote
campaign (especially with chain-letter style emails and threats
of Internet taxes) has the potential of bringing in hundreds of 
thousands of voters (or more).

See:
http://www.commoncause.org/icann/background.htm

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