It's my understanding the ICANN by-laws give voting power to the ALAC in a way that balances the interests of different stakeholders as originally intended when ICANN was created.
To the extent that ALAC can vote on non-binding advice, I suppose that's true. But I'm not sure what you mean by "balance the interests of different stakeholders"; the bylaws clearly indicate that ALAC is supposed to put forward the perspective of Internet end-users. While this is of course a massively diverse global constituency, it at least has some measurable distinction from the self-interested and conflicted communities that make up most of the rest of ICANN's non-technical conmstituencies.
This status is often muddied, in as far as At-Large has also become a "none of the above" home for those in self-interested or conflicted situations who can't find a home elsewhere, such as the domain speculators who have of late been camping out in NARALO.
At-Large did not exist "when ICANN was created"; it was a cynical consequence of the decision to eliminate community elections for the Board, to provide a facade of sensitivity to the grassroots. The public-at-large went overnight from the direct ability to elect Directors to an overly-bureaucratic, process-obsessed (IMO), underfunded mechanism for giving advice to the Board that until not long ago wasn't even acknowledged. After decades the ICANN Board has not yet deemed ALAC mature enough to elect a second Director as its own reviews have advised.
If the ALAC is currently structured in a way that it cannot fulfill its by-law duties, because the DNS Abuse issue "might not be best addressed by a small body of volunteers", I'd like to suggest that maybe the entire ICANN organization has a problem meeting its mission as stated in our bylaws. It may be wise to address any perceived capability problems with ALAC directly, rather than bypassing ICANN's bylaws for the sake of expediency.
The "small body of volunteers" issue has plagued ALAC from its beginnings. Being useful on ALAC involves a great amount of unpaid time and work, following developments led by people who have ICANN involvement as some or all of their job description. Because two-thirds of ALAC is filled by election its positions are often sought by people more interested in politicking and less in crafting relevant and useful advice. (When I was first on ALAC I saw the NomCom appointments as a curse; now I see them as a blessing.)
The result indeed means that the bulk of substantive work (ie policy development and advice creation) ends up being done by a very small number of people. But it also means that the result of this work can easily be dismissed when our output contravenes ICANN's common wisdom, under the "who the hell are you to claim to speak for the billions?" argument. They love the "small body of volunteers" if we agree with them but are savage when we don't.
Since leaving heavy-duty ALAC work I observe that ALAC in its current state is indeed not fit to serve its bylaw duties, but through no fault of its own or its people. Without the ability to do global surveys of public opinion, ALAC is really not capable of knowing what end-users want from ICANN. The best we can do are educated guesses -- which, to be honest, are usually pretty well-thought despite the lack of grounding. And statistical inputs such as John's strengthen our case. But we're still guessing at what the world wants. (If the public at large doesn't give a damn about closed generics, why should ALAC?)
Until ICANN equips ALACs to survey the world and act as a conduit for the results, ALAC won't be able to serve its bylaw mandate. The great experiment that presumed At-Large Structures would effectively provide a broad two-way global communications channel (education going out, quality advice coming back) has generally been a failure at that goal. If you want to address capability problems we can start there.
Then again, I may not be the best person to comment. The way ICANN handled the .ORG transfer fiasco (and especially ALAC's inexcusable paralysis in that matter) was shameful, and provides to me sufficient evidence (though there is much more) that ICANN is not fit for purpose. If it were up to me I'd hand off the technical coordination to either IETF or IEEE, and assemble a treaty convention to deal with the rest.....
Sorry you asked?
Cheers,
- Evan