On Tue, August 30, 2011 3:12 pm, Avri Doria wrote:

> 4. the Charter we just accepted says:
>
>> All NCSG votes will be held using an online voting system to be
>> determined, approved and supervised by the NCSG-EC.
>
> So we would need a charter amendment process to do this.
>
> But we do need to do something to ensure greater participation.

As best I can tell from observation, the main problem was primarily a
matter of individual active members not recognizing the balloting system
for what it was -- some form of "technical" lack of capacity on their
part.  So, I would try to address this head-on.

If I were designing a "failsafe" method, I would require members to
"check-in" with the online balloting system *itself*, directly, somehow,
as a *requirement* to maintain active membership in the first place.

This would presumably ensure that they have in fact "tooled up" with the
individual capacity to recognize and respond to the balloting system, for
when a live, time-constrained election comes around.

That is, I would not use the SG and/or constituency e-lists for such
communication; at least I wouldn't recognize such participation in any
official/formal membership capacity.

If we had problems getting people to check-in with the balloting system,
then (1) we can focus on resolving those technical problems with those
individuals, and (2) any such individual cases that are not in fact
resolved at the time of an election would at least not threaten the voting
requirements for the SG as a whole.  (It could erode the participatory
representation of the group, to be sure, but that seems a lesser of evils
as compared to whether the group "exists at all" in the ICANN system.)

It's all about "critical pathways" in the design of the bureaucracy, and
ensuring that such design is coherent and not potentially self-defeating.

I don't know if such a process would require modifying anything in the
charter, but if so I think we should figure out the best way to design the
system and then modify the charter to match.

Dan


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