ICANN/GNSO


GNSO Election Procedures selecting an ICANN Board member for seat 14 in 2003

The seat 14 is defined in the ICANN Bylaws http://www.icann.org/general/bylaws.htm.

The resulting director will sit on the Board from mid 2003 until second quarter 2005.

This document compiles the GNSO Election Procedures for selecting an ICANN Board member for seat 14 during March 2003. It has been prepared to document the process for the information of the candidates for this seat.

Updated 9 March: Item 1 in DISCLOSURE OF THE VOTING. Liaisons from the ALAC or GAC to the GNSO Council remain on council@dnso.org list.

ELECTION PROCEDURES FOR ICANN BOARD MEMBERS - SEAT 14 - MARCH 2003

NOMINATIONS

Nominations took place between Thursday 20 February and Thursday 6 March. http://www.dnso.org/elections/2003.GNSO-ICANN-seat14-nomination-proc.html

Only GNSO Council members could make nominations.

Six candidates were nominated and four accepted their nominations.
http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/council/Arc12/msg00153.html
http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/icann-nominations/Arc03/

The nominations were:

4 Candidates have accepted their nominations. Jonathan Cohen and Susan Crawford declined their nominations.

There will be 4 eligible candidates:

VOTING PROCEDURE

The voting will be "convention style" voting. This consists of sequential rounds during which the candidates with the lowest number votes are eliminated until a single candidate receives a majority of the votes on the GNSO Council.

SCHEDULE FOR THE ROUNDS OF CONVENTION STYLE VOTING

(as needed:)

(as needed:)

(as needed:)

Rounds 5 and subsequent, as needed: As scheduled, in Rio de Janeiro.

COUNTING OF VOTES

As provided in the ICANN bylaws http://www.icann.org/general/bylaws.htm, each GNSO Council member representing either the registrars constituency or the gTLD registries constituency will be entitled to cast two votes in each round. Members of the council representing the other four constituencies (business users, non-commercial users, ISP, and intellecual property constituency) will be entitled to cast one vote in each round.

ELIMINATION OF CANDIDATES FROM SUBSEQUENT ROUNDS

The specifics of eliminations from subsequent rounds of voting:

  1. On the first round, all candidates getting zero votes, and all candidates receiving the lowest non-zero number of votes are eliminated from subsequent rounds. Example first round: 
            Candidate 1             receives 0 votes
        Candidate 2             receives 2 vote
        Candidate 3             receives 4 votes
        Candidate 4             receives 6 vote
        Candidate 5             receives 8 vote
        Candidate 6             receives 2 vote

    Candidate 1 is eliminated because he or she received zero votes. Candidates 2 and 6 are eliminated because they both received two votes, which is the lowest non-zero number. Candidates 3, 4, and 5 appear on the ballot in the next round.

  2. On all rounds after the first, all candidates receiving the lowest number of votes are eliminated from subsequent rounds. Example: 
            Candidate 1             receives 2  votes
        Candidate 2             receives 11 votes
        Candidate 3             receives 2 votes
        Candidate 4             receives 9 votes

    Candidates 1 and 3 are eliminated because they both received two votes, which is the lowest number. Only candidates 2 and 4 appear on the ballot in the next round.

  3. In the final round, one candidate must receive a majority of the total number of votes that all members of the GNSO may cast. Example, assuming 24 votes total on GNSO Council: 
            Candidate 1             receives 6 votes
        Candidate 2             receives 12 votes
        Candidate 3             receives 6 votes

    Candidates 1 and 3 are eliminated because they both received six votes, which is the lowest number. Because candidate 2 did not receive thirteen votes (a majority of 24), he or she is not selected in this round. An additional round will be run, with a single candidate, and candidate 2 must receive 13 affirmative votes to be victorious.

GNSO COUNCIL MEMBERS ELIGIBLE TO VOTE

The registrars constituency currently has only two representatives, there being one vacancy. They are each entitled to cast two votes. Until the vacancy is filled, only the existing seventeen members of the GNSO Council are entitled to vote, so there are a total of 22 votes to be cast and a majority is 12. Once the Registrars Constituency selects a member to fill the vacancy (by notifying the ICANN Secretary), that member will receive (and may vote) all subsequently distributed ballots. There will then be a total of 24 votes to be cast and a majority is 13.

If the registrars constituency notifies the ICANN Secretary that it has selected a member to fill the vacancy during a round of e-mail voting, the member may participate in that round of e-mail voting only if the notification is given to the Secretary at least 24 hours before the ballots are to be returned to the GNSO Secretariat.

DISCLOSURE OF THE VOTING

The arrangments regarding disclosure of voting will be very similar to the procedures followed in the past by the DNSO Names Council in its selection of members to the ICANN Board.

For references to the past procedures, see

Here are the arrangements:

  1. Public archiving of the GNSO Council list will be stopped immediately. In addition, the recipients of the list will be limited to: (a) members of the GNSO Council, but excluding Philip Sheppard, who is a candidate; (b) any liaisons from the ALAC or GAC to the GNSO Council; and (c) the GNSO Secretariat. (If the registrars constituency selects a new GNSO Council member during the process, he or she will be added to the list if he or she is not also a candidate.) The list recipients and archiving will be restored at the end of the process (step 7 below).

  2. Messages posted to the list from its closure (see step 1 above) to its re-opening (see step 7 below) should be treated as confidential until the re-opening. The GNSO Secretariat may, however, disclose them to the General Counsel to the extent appropriate to obtain advice about how to handle procedural problems that arise during the voting process.

  3. Ballots will be sent out individually to each GNSO Council members' e-mail address.

  4. Ballots should be filled out and returned to the e-mail address stated in the ballot. They should not be copied to any e-mail list.

  5. At the scheduled times, the Secretariat will announce the results of each round of balloting by sending a message to the mailing list. These announcements will include:

    1. The number of votes received by each candidate;
    2. The names of the GNSO Council members from whom ballots were received; and
    3. The confidential code number of each ballot and the candidate for whom it was voted.

    Item 5(c) will allow each GNSO Council member to double-check that his or her ballot was properly understood, but will not allow others to determine how the member voted.

  6. Discussion among the the GNSO Council members during the voting process may occur on the mailing list. These discussions will be private during the voting process, but will be available as public archives after the process for selecting Seat 14 is completed. Please note that the General Council will not be a recipient of the list during this period, so he should be copied on any particular message that you wish to bring to his attention.

  7. The GNSO Council will confirm the results of the voting at its meeting in Rio de Janeiro on 25 March 2003. Once that occurs, the GNSO Secretariat will prepare and post a full record of all voting, including how each member voted in each round. The previous configuration of the mailing list (i.e. recipients) will be restored and the archives of the list during the period between steps 1 and 7 will become publicly available.

VOTING BY PROXY

(to be added)

Information from:
 © GNSO Council