In discussing this issue within the RyC there has been considerable support for expanding voting to include electronic voting for a limited time frame (e.g., 7 calendar days). If that was done, proxy voting may not even be needed. We sometimes do that in the RyC. Chuck -----Original Message----- From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Philip Sheppard Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2008 6:59 AM To: 'Council GNSO' Subject: [council] initial memo on propsed proxy voting change Happy New Year fellow Council members; The staff recommendations in the note on proxy voting seem sound and consistent with former Names Council practice when we engaged in proxy voting - whether we were supposed to or not. On the item c - participation, I believe current practice whereby we have often extensively talked over an issue before a vote, covers this point. All we need now is to set out the recommendations into a short set of rules and add in a few practicalities such as open proxy and a proxy with direction to vote in a certain way, and we are done. I hope we can move forward on this with due haste. Philip