ICANNnot.org is my personal website devoted to the current ICANN at-large elections. I will continue to update this website as the election proceeds, so check back before your final vote!

I have submitted my name as a North American candidate for member nomination; however, I am willing to sacrifice my chances at nomination in the interest of promoting the nominations of others that share my views.

If you are a member from North America please endorse me, but only after the following candidates are assured of nominations:

I don't know any of these candidates personally. However, after reading their web pages, I believe their views mesh with mine, and they seem to be more qualified.

How did I choose these candidates? First, I eliminated all candidates that did not have a link to a personal web page discussing ICANN platforms. If a candidate can't use the web effectively to communicate with members during the campaign, I doubt the candidate would do so if elected.

I selected three of these members because they will actively consider and/or promote alternatives to the current monolithic root server system. (For more info about such alternatives, I suggest looking through the candidate web sites of Karl Auerbach, Barbara Simons, and Robin Bandy.) No doubt, there are other strong candidates who advocate an expansion of the number of top level domains ("TLDs"). However, simply adding more TLDs will do little to solve the artificial domain name scarcity problem.

I added Eric Lee, who runs the excellent union news website LabourStart, because he will make sure the largely corporate ICANN board is aware of the interests of working people.

Finally, I chose Emerson Tiller, because of his views, qualifications, and background, and his efforts at registering members and keeping them informed through his website icannVote.com.

 

The Nominations Process

In the North America region, there were 21596 applications for membership by the July 31st deadline. Currently, approximately 9300 of the applicants have verified their memberships, and this number should rise above 10,000 by the end of the nominations period. Each candidate needs endorsements from 2% of the verified members (not 2% of the voting members). Thus, each candidate will need 200 to 400 endorsements, depending on the eventual number of verified members. Since each member is only allowed to endorse a single candidate, obtaining the enough endorsements might be difficult. It's made more difficult by the timing of the nominations period, at the end of the summer (in the northern hemisphere, as a member from Australia reminded me) when many members might be on vacation, moving, or preparing for the school year. Some of those who verified months ago might have misplaced their PINs or lost interest. Other members might not vote and instead just wait until the election.

So far, there have been enough endorsements in the North America region that the 2% threshold will not be a problem for the top 3 candidates. However, the top few candidates in other regions, particularly Asia/Australia/Pacific, will have difficulty gaining enough endorsements because of low turnout. There is still a chance that even with the threshold lowered from 10% in the ICANN staff's initial member-nominations proposal,¹ members will be unable to nominate anyone in Asia/Australia/Pacific, and most likely members will only be able to nominate one candidate from the Latin America/Caribbean region.

Another ICANN restriction is far more serious for the North America and Europe regions. ICANN arbitrarily picked 7 as the total number of candidates on the final ballot, including the Nominating Committee's candidates. The NomCom picked 4 candidates for North America and 5 candidates for Europe, leaving just 3 and 2 spots, respectively, for member nominations. There will almost certainly be at least one candidate who will lose the nomination solely because of the 7 candidate limit.

The three Africa candidates for member nomination face a unique challenge. Because there are fewer than 1000 members from Africa, the 20 endorsement minimum applies to them, rather than 2% of the members. As I write this, the first place candidate, with endorsements from over 6% of verified members and 60% of the total endorsements, only has 16 endorsements. He will not get on the ballot unless he gains 4 more endorsements. The effect of the 20 endorsement minimum is shown in my elections projection table by the table entries containing "<20" highlighted in yellow. This indicates that the candidate would have endorsements from at least 2% of the members, but less than 20 endorsements.

What you can do to make your endorsement count: There are two important aspects of the nominations process which should make it easier for you to make your endorsement count and to maximize the number of quality member nominations. First, ICANN has decided to update endorsement figures continually. Pay attention to the nomination status and you can avoid wasting your endorsement on a candidate that has no chance of winning, or on a candidate that already has enough endorsements. Second, ICANN allows members to change their endorsements during the election period. Thus, members can vote now and not be worried that their votes will be wasted, because they can check the election status near the end of the nominations period and shift their votes to help a candidate that is borderline.

So, I ask that you make your initial endorsement now, preferably for one of the candidates above if you're in the North America region, and, near the end of the nomination phase, recheck the campaign status and consider modifying your endorsement to help a borderline candidate.

¹ I submitted a couple of public comments about the threshold issue to ICANN's public comment forums in June and July. My first comment only dealt partially with thresholds (in points 4 and 5) and seems to have been ignored. My second comment went into more detail, but never was seen by anyone, because it never got included in the forum contents. (I sent a couple of emails about the problem to ICANN staff, but never got a response.) My basic argument is that artificial limitations on the number of candidates are not necessary for on-line elections, because the administrative costs per additional candidate are almost zero. Furthermore, the technology of the web can enable each voter to filter out candidates as each voter feels appropriate.)