Forwarded From: Avri Doria Hi, We have had a few open votes for chair held in meetings during my tenure on the council, but you are right none have been held that way recently. And all of the elections for vice-chair have been held openly in meetings. One problem we have is that the new council is not seated until Wednesday 28 October, and the old council (us) is not empowered to vote in this election before then. We had decided as part of the transition plan to hold the election on the Wednesday, and had scheduled a session on the weekend where the candidates would be able to speak as well as a last chance during the meeting themselves.. That to me meant an open vote, which as I say is not completely unheard of in the council. It is, I suppose, possible to come up with schemes for secret ballots within the constraints of seating the new council on Wednesday if this is required by the council members. a. On 15 Oct 2009, at 13:25, Rosette, Kristina wrote:
To my recollection, none of our previous elections while I have been on Council have been public. I thought I'd missed the rationale for holding it publicly. I've gone back and reviewed the messages I could find, but haven't seen one. I had thought we would be voting privately in the week beforehand with the results announced at the meeting.
I object to our having to hold the election as a roll call vote. I believe all Councilors should be permitted to cast votes privately. Casting open ballots will not be conducive to the improved working relationship that many of us have articulated a desire to develop. Moreover, given that I have found the environment at ICANN meetings generally (including public Council meetings) to be hostile, I believe casting those votes publicly is more likely than not to exacerbate that problem.
In sum, I want to vote privately as we've done in the past and have the results announced at the Council meeting. Doing so has the extra benefit of having a definitive result at the Council meeting (assuming there is a clear winner); no delay from absentee balloting will occur.
K
Kristina Rosette Covington & Burling LLP 1201 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20004-2401 voice: 202-662-5173 direct fax: 202-778-5173 main fax: 202-662-6291 e-mail: krosette@cov.com
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----- Original Message ----- From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org <owner-council@gnso.icann.org> To: Council GNSO <council@gnso.icann.org> Sent: Thu Oct 15 03:23:01 2009 Subject: Re: [council] Council wide Nominations are closed - Part 2 Each House determines a Candidate
Hi,
I wanted to ad a few more details to this part of the process.
On 15 Oct 2009, at 08:01, Glen de Saint Géry wrote:
B. PROPOSED SCHEDULE FOR THE VOTING
For this election, the voting will take place at the public Council meeting in Seoul on Wednesday, 28 October 2009.
Avri Doria, current GNSO Council chair, will serve as non-voting chair of the bicameral Council meeting on 28 October until such time as a new chair is elected, at which time the new chair will assume the chair responsibilities.
If an absentee ballot is required to complete the chair's election, this will be a 24 hour ballot scheduled to end on 29 October. If no chair has been elected by the end of the Annual meeting on 30 October, the vice-chairs will assume the chair responsibilities as defined in the Bylaws and a runoff will be scheduled as determined in the Council Procedures.
The winning candidate needs 60% of the votes of each house.
The Council shall inform the Board and the Community appropriately and post the election results on the GNSO website within 2 business days following the election.
In the event that the GNSO Council has not elected a GNSO Council Chair by the end of the previous Chair's term, the Vice-Chairs will serve as Interim GNSO Co-Chairs until a successful election can be held.
Since this election will be done in the meeting, I am planning to hold it as an open vote via a roll call. This will be the second major item on the agenda, after a vote on any amendments to the proposed Operating Procedures the new Operating Procedures as possibly amended.
I am hoping that all of the council members will be available for the vote, either in person or via remote communications, so that the election can be completed on the Wednesday, even if it needs to go to two rounds. If we do not have everyone available for the call, then we will need to go a 24 hour absentee ballot on each round. This means that the first round would not end until Thursday morning. If necessary we could schedule a second round for Thursday, though we would then need to allow for voting at the Thursday meeting, which would be an exception to our normal practice. In this case a second absentee ballot would end on Friday afternoon. In any case, the goal is to enable the election of the new chair, if at all possible, by the end of the Seoul meeting.
As I said, I am hoping we can avoid needing to do an absentee ballot so I hope that any council member who cannot attend the meeting can participate remote in al least the first part of the Wednesday meeting.
Assuming we have a different candidate from each House, each council member polled would in turn be able to vote for:
Candidate chosen by Contracted Parties House (CP House or, Candidate chosen by Non Contracted Parties House (NCP House) or, None of the above
(In the case of a single candidate chosen by both Houses, the vote would resemble the second round procedure below)
The votes would be tabulated separately according to House, though the roll will be called alphabetically.
To succeed a candidate needs 60% or each house. This means 5 out of 7 votes for the CP House and 8 out of 13 votes for the NCP House.
- If either the CP House candidate or NCP House candidate get 60% of each House, he or she will have been elected and will take over as chair of the meeting at that point.
- If 'None of the above' gets 60% of each house, then the election is halted and rescheduled for a month later. In this case the two vice- chairs will take over as interim co-chairs at the end of the week.
- If neither of the candidates (or "none of the above") gets the required 60% of each house, then a second round is called for.
Assuming every one is present on Wednesday morning, we can hold this second round vote immediately, otherwise we can hold it on Thursday.
The second roll call vote will be between:
The candidate who received the greatest combined percentage of the votes when the results of each house is summed to the other (Percentage from CP House + Percentage from NCP House) or, None of the above
If the candidate receives 60% votes of each House ( out of 7 votes for the CP House and 8 out of 13 votes for the NCP House) then that candidate has been elected and will take over as chair of the meeting at that point.
Otherwise, the election then the election is halted and rescheduled for a month later. In this case the two vice-chairs will take over as interim co-chairs at the end of the week.
I believe this process follows from the rules set for the election of chairs in the new bi-cameral council. I very much look forward to completing a successful election on Wednesday morning.
Thanks,
a.