On Sun, 6 Dec 2009 23:54:33 -0500, Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org> wrote:
The number of people who need to be instructed on the voting method is less than 150, for the ALS representatives plus ALAC (plus some others, such as the EURALO council and NARALO individual members).
Given that these people are either representatives of other bodies or themselves interested in ICANN affairs as individuals, I would suggest that this group is probably intelligent enough to understand the process *and* the point behind using an "order of preference" ballot as opposed to a 'first past the post' method.
My personal view if that the voting method will depend on the voter base. Whether we have 15, 20 or 150 voters can influence the method we choose. I would personally prefer an election with simple majority, and a second round between the two candidates that had the most votes in the first round if no one gets more than 50% (ie French presidential election system, among others). This is easy to understand and would give, I think, more legitimacy to the elected candidate, knowing he/she is the first choice of more than 50% of the voters, rather than being the second choice of 70%. An "order of preference" seems confusing. It forces one to have a second (and third, etc) choice, when actually you may only wish to make one single choice. You end up indicating second and third choices only because the software forces you to, not because this is actually what you think. Patrick -- Blog: http://patrick.vande-walle.eu Twitter: http://twitter.vande-walle.eu