Hi,

One simple question: Have you ever seen an election where the ballot 
lets you vote against a candidate? You can abstain, spoil the ballot 
paper, but you can not have a situation where if there are more 
abstentions and spoiled ballot votes, then there are actually votes for 
a candidate, you have to vote again.  At least that is how I understand 
democracy and voting so far.

Yours

Klaus

On 8/22/2016 3:38 PM, Amr Elsadr wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Catching up to many emails on multiple threads on this list over the past couple of days, but wanted to start here.
>
> Avri’s description below of what NOTA means on the ballot has also been my understanding for years now. The reason this has been my working assumption over several election cycles where I have always picked NOTA over at least one candidate, is that this has been discussed several times right here on this list. This is, however, the first time the interpretation of what role NOTA plays has ever been challenged.
>
> I appreciate that this is not explicitly stated in the NCSG charter, but wanted to point out that the applicability of NOTA that we have been using for years now (again…, as Avri describes below) is also the standing practice of the GNSO Council Chair elections. The difference is that in the GNSO’s case, it is clearly stated in the operating procedures.
>
>  From the GNSO’s Operating Procedures (https://gnso.icann.org/en/council/op-procedures-16feb16-en.pdf), section 2.2-b-i:
>
>> All ballots will include the “none of the above” option. In the event that a 60 percent vote of each house selects the “none of the above” option, each house will commence a new nomination period of not longer than 15 days. An election for the new nominees will be scheduled for no sooner than 30 days after the unsuccessful vote.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Amr
>
>> On Aug 22, 2016, at 2:46 PM, avri doria <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> The way I always thought NOTA worked in a ranking election as we have
>> for council, is that if someone picked NOTA instead of one candidate,
>> they were saying they preferred no one to that person.
>>
>> If they picked NOTA instead of 2 or 3 they preferred NOTA to any of them.
>>
>> After the counting, the top n win (3 in this case), except that anyone
>> who got fewer votes than NOTA would not.  If there were fewer people
>> that 3 above NOTA, then we would need another election to fill the empty
>> slot (s).
>>
>> Our various EC were supposed to write procedures defining all of this
>> stuff years ago.  Unfortunately they have functioned more as membership
>> committee than an EC doing the chartered work of proposing procedures as
>> defined in the charter.
>>
>> avri
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 22-Aug-16 08:23, James Gannon wrote:
>>> Hi Tapani,
>>>
>>> In the absence of something in the charter, can you clarify what the situation is with regards to NOTA votes if NOTA places above a natural person in the final vote what is the situation?
>>>
>>> -James
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 22/08/2016, 10:54, "NCSG-Discuss on behalf of Tapani Tarvainen" <[log in to unmask] on behalf of [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 09:44:10AM +0000, James Gannon ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Just on process where does the NOTA candidate come from with regards
>>>>> to our charter, as it seems that the inclusion of a NOTA candidate
>>>>> is not referenced anywhere.
>>>> While NotA is not explicitly mentioned in the charter, it has been
>>>> discussed in the past and an explicit NotA choice has been felt
>>>> to be useful. I'm only following precedent here.
>>>>
>>>>> Also we have a serious election process flaw in that with the manner
>>>>> in which NOTA is given is makes it impossible for us not to elect a
>>>>> full slate of candidates if the number of candidates matches the
>>>>> number of positions, which makes this essentially an acclimation.
>>>> How so? You can select any number of candidates, up to three.
>>>>
>>>> Arguably NotA is redundant in that the practical effect is
>>>> the same as not selecting any candidates, but in the past
>>>> it has been considered better to have it as an explicit choice.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Tapani Tarvainen
>>
>>
>> ---
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