To be fair, I don't think the individual Councillor in question was speaking for the Constituency, only herself. Nonetheless, Dan's (and others') points are the main concern - there is no reason to have secret ballots in view of ICANN's commitment to openness and transparency. I plan to make a statement to the Council supporting Bill and reiterating the NCUC position on this shortly. Cheers Mary Mary W S Wong Professor of Law & Chair, IP Programs Franklin Pierce Law Center Two White Street Concord, NH 03301 USA Email: [log in to unmask] Phone: 1-603-513-5143 Webpage: http://www.piercelaw.edu/marywong/index.php Selected writings available on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) at: http://ssrn.com/author=437584 >>> Dan Krimm <[log in to unmask]> 10/15/2009 5:15 PM >>> 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. -- Any opinions expressed in this message are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect any position of the author's employer.