Since the topic has come up on the list once or twice over the last few days, I thought I might share some history about the creation of the ALAC as an "Organization of Organizations composed of Individuals." That's not a structure that one might choose if starting from scratch, and since it's not at all obvious why it came to be, I thought I'd share my recollection of events. Some of you know this background information already, but it may be of interest to those who are new to the ALAC and the RALOs. Once upon a time, back in 1998 when ICANN was created, ICANN was supposed to have 19 members of its Board of Directors. 9 would be elected by "Supporting Organizations" (3 from each of the domain name community, the IP address community, and the technical/standards community). 9 "At Large Directors" also would be elected by individual Internet users from around the world. And, finally, ICANN's President would have a seat on the Board. The group that incorporated ICANN seeded it with 9 "Initial" Directors, intending that they oversee the formation of the organization and step down when new Directors were elected to replace them. Within the first year of ICANN's existence, the three "supporting organizations" each elected their three Directors, bringing the total on ICANN's Board to 19, but the initial Directors stayed on until the new "At Large" Directors could be elected to replace them. But ICANN wasn't quite sure how to elect these 9 "At Large" Directors, so it tasked various advisory committees to study the issue. In early 2000, after close to two years of debate and study, the ICANN Board decided to hold global online elections. Given the uncertainties of the process and the fear of election fraud or gaming, the ICANN Board decided not to put half of its seats up for grabs in one election. Rather than electing 9 "At Large" Directors, it decided to elect only 5. In the summer of 2000, over 76,000 people signed up to vote in ICANN's online elections. After a few weeks of campaigning, five new Directors were elected in online elections overseen by the Carter Center. (You can see the archives here: http://members.icann.org/). Following the election, the ICANN Board tasked a blue ribbon committee, chaired by former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, to review the elections and determine what worked, what failed, and make recommendations for going forward. Some of the issues that the committee considered were "who is an individual internet user?", "how do you authenticate individual internet users for voting purposes?", and "how do you record votes in a secure manner not susceptible to fraud?" At the end of this study, the Bildt Committee issues a comprehensive set of recommendations about how to conduct online elections for ICANN Board seats. (See, http://atlargestudy.org/) Rejecting the advice of both the Bildt Committee and other groups that had examined the same issue (http://www.naisproject.org/), the ICANN Board decided that figuring out how to conduct online elections was far outside ICANN's mandate, and the subject was distracting it from doing the real work that it needed to do. Accordingly, it decided that the terms of the "At Large Directors" would end and that it would move to a Nominating Committee approach to elect the balance of its Directors. Many of the people who had studied online elections and campaigned for an At Large presence, however, were not content to allow the Board to end At Large participation altogether. The efforts of people like Esther Dyson, Roberto Gaetano, Vittorio Bertola, Wendy Seltzer, Andy Mueller-Maguhn, Izumi Aizu, Adam Peake, and Jeannette Hoffman convinced the Board that it needed to retain an At Large presence. What the Board agreed to do was sidestep the troublesome issues of "who is an individual Internet user" and "how do you authenticate individuals" by substituting existing organizations in the place of individuals. The logic was that organizations that existed for purposes other than ICANN presumably would have verified their members, through membership fees, fund-raising contributions, physical presence or some other means. ICANN would borrow and build upon the efforts of legitimate organizations to build its At Large membership. This was the original thinking behind the idea that At Large Structures be organizations where individuals predominate; it's basically a fudge for authentication and verification of individuals. Bret