At 10:41 AM -0700 10/15/09, Robin Gross wrote:
>Thanks to Bill for weighing in against this.  I was surprised by the
>strong reaction of the IPC member who threatens to NOT vote unless she can
>vote in secret.


I've got no problem if an IPC member chooses not to vote...  ;-)

Sorry, that sort of comment makes me a little bit snarky.

Since ICANN voting is a restricted privilege (since membership in a
constituency is a restricted privilege), and not a right granted to the
general public as such, the whole secret ballot thing just doesn't apply.
Constituency members are more like representatives than citizen-voters, and
transparency is the guiding principle.

Actually, they are mostly like lobbyists.

In ICANN's efforts to resolve the problem of lobbyists influencing
representatives, instead of deciding to do away with lobbyists, they did
away with the representatives, leaving only the lobbyists.

An innovative choice by the founders, gotta give 'em that.</irony>

Dan

PS:  I do recognize that this makes *us* lobbyists, but if lobbying is the
only way to get representation inside ICANN, then the general public needs
its own lobbyists as well as all the other special interests, and we are
about as close to that as there is at ICANN, with the sporadic exception of
ALAC.


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