I'll second Dan's wonderfully practical and fair solution. Nicolas On 8/30/2011 6:35 PM, 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 > >