Thanks Bruce. It still seems to me that the cleanest way to deal with a conflict of interest is to abstain as Board members do. That is the only way that totally removes the implication of being influenced by the contlict. At the same time, as I have stated in other messages, I do believe that a constituency should still have the right to have its position counted regardless of whether a particular Council member has a conflict or not, so provisions should be made for that. Chuck Gomes "This message is intended for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. Any unauthorized use, distribution, or disclosure is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify sender immediately and destroy/delete the original transmission."
-----Original Message----- From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Bruce Tonkin Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2007 3:51 AM To: GNSO Council Subject: RE: [council] Point for Discussion
Hello Chuck,
To give a proxy to someone who would vote for a position that you would support, seems out of order to me if you have a conflict of interest.
Just as a point of information on past examples. When the Council provided advice to the Board on the criteria for the .net bid process, several Council members - including myself chose not to vote due to conflict of interest issues. In fact it is possible that all registrar reps did not vote.
In that case we gave the votes to one of the Council members appointed by the Nominating Committee (Alick Wilson) with instructions to vote as he saw fit. At the time Alick did not indicate how he would vote in advance.
In other situations I have seen votes given to the chair - to vote as the chair sees fit.
The reason I raise this - was in this case there were multiple Council members that did not vote due to possible conflict of interest issues.
This approach was discussed with the General Counsel at the time before the meeting - but I can't recall which version of the bylaws we were operating under at the time.
Regards, Bruce Tonkin