Thanks Avri,

 (1)  As long as the mailing list for determining active membership was
not the same as the system used to do the actual balloting, it is the
same issue.  It's not that it was or wasn't the SG list, but that it
wasn't the ballot system itself.  The point being, it needs to be
recognizable when it comes into someone's email inbox.  Headers and such
need to be familiar so that when the ballot is sent out it doesn't look
like something out of the blue.  Begin to lock-in the
repetition/recognition factor as early and consistently as possible. 
Maybe something like "NCSG Membership System" that is used both for
(re-)establishing active membership and also actual live ballots.  Maybe
even use the balloting system itself to communicate a "vote to be an
active member" -- exactly the same mechanism as used to vote in an
election.

The point being that: every time someone receives one of these they should
act on it, either to sustain active membership or to vote in an election. 
The active-membership confirmations should be sent on a regular basis,
maybe once every six months or so (at least once before each new election
-- so an alternative method would be: several weeks before each election,
to re-up for the pending election).  People would get in the habit of
seeing these and reflexively acting on them, practice makes perfect.  Then
when the ballot for an election itself actually comes, they'd be more
inclined to act on that as well.  This is really just basic Pavlov.  ;-)

 (2)  100% "turnout" is probably not to be expected, ever.  62% response
may be typical, though perhaps with some effort we can improve on that
somewhat.  People may be busy, on vacation, or for whatever personal
reason not paying attention to email in a consistent manner.  That's why
it seems important to me to at least make sure that the "active member"
baseline (i.e., denominator of participation rate) has successfully
connected-in to the balloting system.  Then we can tweak the presentation
from there, to maximize response.  But at least we should ensure that
technical obstacles are reduced to a minimum or even eliminated if
possible.

Best,
Dan


-- 
Any opinions expressed in this message are those of the author alone and
do not necessarily reflect any position of the author's employer.



On Tue, August 30, 2011 4:16 pm, Avri Doria wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Interesting proposal.
>
>
> Only 2 points immediately come to me.
>
> 1. I used a mailing list of the addresses of the members, and not this
> discuss list to get people to check-in.  True it was not the voting
> mechanism but it was also not the discuss list.  The discuss list mailings
> were secondary to alert people to the other activity.
>
> 2. even after checking in and getting a ballot that they could either
> return or go to a web site, 38% of active members did not vote.
>
> I think the methodology can and should be improved, but I am skeptical
> about the methods being the problem I think greater use of technology
> would help.  In any case, several people have requested that after all of
> this is done with the charter and the election, work should be done to
> figure out better means of doing it all.  I think this is a great idea but
> I figure I will leave starting this process to the NCSG chair that you
> will all soon elect and not try to do so before then.  I hope that people
> like Ron, Dan and others will be active in working with the NCSG in coming
> up with plans and implementations.
>
> a.
>
>
>
> On 30 Aug 2011, at 15:35, Dan Krimm wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>>
>> --
>> Any opinions expressed in this message are those of the author alone and
>> do not necessarily reflect any position of the author's employer.
>>
>