Dear all,

First full disclosure: I have been in this position in the past,
voting both as individual member and as the representative of
Electronic Frontier Finland (Effi). Not anymore though, after earlier
controversy about it I asked Effi to appoint another official
representative, so now I only have my individual vote in NCSG
elections.

That said, I now tend to agree that disallowing such double voting
would be good for NCSG. But it is not quite as simple and obvious as
it might seem at first.

Besides the usefulness of adding such a rule, it is important that it
would be done in proper order, following due process. In particular I
think it would be inappropriate to change rules in the middle of
ongoing election. So I think whatever is decided now should only apply
to subsequent elections. And in implementing it we should follow our
charter, and consider what kind of rules can and cannot be implemented
without changing the charter.

After all we're talking about disenfranchising or even removing
members against their will, which is just about as serious as anything
can be in an organization's rules.

As a general observation: there's nothing unusual about one person
having multiple votes or representing multiple interests in elections.
In limited companies votes go by shares and a voter can represent
multiple shareholders, or to pick a closer example, in GNSO council
councillors can have a proxy vote in addition to their own. And of
course in NCSG elections organizations already have more votes than
individuals. Nor is it unheard of for someone to vote differently
with different votes they're holding in the same election (indeed
at least once I've voted differently with my individual vote than
with Effi's vote in NCSG elections).

There are, however, often limits on how many votes one person can
have. In GNSO council a single councillor can only hold one proxy and
thus at most two votes, for example. And some type of limited
companies have restrictions too, like allowing one voter to hold at
most certain percentage of votes. So I don't see any problem in
principle for adopting such a rule for NCSG as well.

I am not certain if it could be done without changing the charter,
however. It might depend on how exactly it is done; depriving a member
of their vote is a rather drastic thing to do, but perhaps making it a
limitation on organizations' choice of their representatives would be
easier.

The more drastic option of disallowing one person even from being
both individual member and organizational representative would
also be possible, but considerably more complicated.

One easy case is when handling new member applications, i.e., when
either an organization in its application names a current member as
its representative, or when an organization's representative applies
for individual membership. In such situations NCSG EC can and should
use its discretion to judge if it looks like just an attempt to get
more votes - in particular if it looks like a de facto one-person
organization, such an application could well be rejected. No new
formal rules or charter changes would be needed, although EC could of
course adopt internal guidelines for such situations.

But when such a situation happens otherwise, when the two are already
members, whether predating rule change or when an organization wants
to change its representative to someone who's already an individual
member, it becomes more difficult. It would either have to be written
in member removal procedures that the individual membership would
thereby be lost or as a restriction on who the organization can
appoint as their representative. I'm not sure either could be done
without changing the charter, nor do I think it'd be a good idea to
begin with.

As a practical observation, the "gaming of system" scenario would
seem to be realistic just with such one-person organizations or
cases where only one person in an organization is actually
involved in NCSG - a large organization should have no trouble
in selecting a representative who isn't an individual NCSG member.

With that observation I conclude I can see no significant practical
harm in prohibiting an individual from voting in two roles, and it
would have definite advantages, so I'd be willing to support that.
(I note though that formulating such a rule would take some care,
but probably nothing really difficult.)

I would not, however, want to disallow an individual member from
even retaining their membership if they are an organization's
representative at the same time. In particular I would not want to
keep them from representing NCSG in working groups &c in their
individual capacity.

But whatever rule we choose to adopt, I would want it to be done
right, following due process and taking care of compatibility with our
charter, even changing it if need be. Asking ICANN legal team for an
opinion about that might be a good idea.

Sincerely,

Tapani Tarvainen

On Jul 21 12:41, Collin Kurre ([log in to unmask]) wrote:

> Hello Farzaneh,
> 
> Thanks for raising this issue on the broader list. 
> 
> As you imply, one could imagine a situation where an individual member holds views that differ from their organization’s positions or strategies. Perhaps the more fundamental question is whether one person can be both an organizational representative and and individual member. Deciding on this question would preempt the need to determine whether an organizational opinion should invalidate the representing individual’s.
> 
> Full disclosure: I was one of the organizational reps who was contacted and opted to forfeit my individual vote in the interest of fairness until this matter is decided by the group.
> 
> Kind regards,
> Collin Kurre
> 
> --
> Collin Kurre
> ARTICLE 19
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > On Jul 21, 2018, at 12:21 PM, farzaneh badii <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > 
> > Dear all, 
> > 
> > I have sent the message below to NCSG EC and I think we need to have a discussion about it and make an official decision on this issue. Please chime in:
> > 
> > At the moment the organizational reps who are individual members of NCSG can participate in the elections as both organizational rep and individual members. Apparently, it has been discussed repeatedly in the past with no decision. Other than they said it is not against the charter.
> > 
> > Not having remembered that it has been discussed but no decision made, I started contacting those who were listed as an individual member as well as organizational rep on the check-in list and asked them to choose whether they want to be individual members or represent their organization, since being both allowed them to vote twice which I think is not acceptable for the integrity of elections. Tapani corrected me and said the issue was discussed but never decided against https://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/election-reform/2017-June/000021.html <https://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/election-reform/2017-June/000021.html>
> > 
> > I personally think it is unfair to allow organizational reps who are individual members to vote twice. This is because organizational reps (usually but not always) have autonomy from their organization to vote as they see appropriate and do not have a mandate as such. If they are also individual members, it provides them with the opportunity to vote twice and I think we need to fix it. 
> > 
> > It might be too late to do this in this election but we need to discuss and make a decision. I have started explaining the rationale to those who are organizational reps as well as individual members and asked them to decide what they want to do for this election voluntarily until we make a decision. 
> > 
> > 
> > Best
> > 
> > 
> > Farzaneh