Hi all, As of last count over 45 emails have been exchanged on the registrars list about how the ballot should have been differently held and how the election was not 100% proper. Has the ballot been improperly conducted? Maybe Does it justify SO MUCH discussion - NO WAYS I have spoken to several Registrars during my budget negotiations with ICANN. We ran a successful alliance of 76 Registrars and managed to obtain several concessions as all of you are aware. During this time a common thread of thought amongst every participant was exasperation at how the Registrars Constituency simply delves on issues that are totally useless and gets lost in political jargon and buereaucracy, and eventually every issue that has affected us Registrars since the last several years has not seen much progress or modification. To the extent that some Registrars I speak to openly call "the Registrars constituency as nothing but a vehicle to justify and approve ICANN and Verisign's injustice upon Registrars". Please don't get me wrong here. I am not criticising ICANN or Verisign. Life is difficult for everyone when trying to achieve consensus. But as of now clearly almost all Registrars have lost faith in the constituency simply because the constituency just sits idle when it comes to issues that potentially affect Registrars, while many have a lot to say about total non-issues Here we have two issues that can threaten the existence of several Registrars and substantially change the market (the Verisign mail and the NSI issue) and I can count the number of mails sent about these issues on the fingers of my ONE hand. Does the Registrars constituency have any official position on these issues? NO. Has the Registrars constituency tried to accumulate opinion or contact Registrars and ask them what they think about this? NO. Yet 47 long mails have been exchanged to and fro about a tiny oversight in the ballot which does not really matter. Even during the ICANN Budget, the constituency supposedly tried some outreach, held two phone calls (one of which was hardly attended) and was supposed to come up with a proposed official position document which never happened. I tried to steer the budget issue both from within the constituency and from outside and realized that I was actually facing resistance when trying to work on it from within. During the ICANN budget alliance process that I was steering - we probably did not do everything in the perfect way. We did not hold the perfect ballots, we did not have large task forces, we did not organize conference calls, we did not have resources to spend, we did not have an expensive boardrooms.org software. Yet things worked. Things worked because we were a bunch of Registrars, focussing on a common issue, and not getting involved in tiny road blocks along the way. Given that the constituency does not have the same luxury of using half-baked processes. Given that the constituency has by-laws that must be followed. But lets cut some slack here. So the ballot did not start with an open result. However at this point in time it is open since the last 24 hours (or greater) and people have the ability to change their votes across the next 3 days. How does it make ANY difference as to whether the ballot was not open from Monday onwards. It is precisely this kind of bureaucracy that WE as Registrars try to fight with ICANN and with other organizations - and we ourselves end up falling prey to it in our own backyard? It is precisely this sort of a discussion and time wastage that convinces most Registrars that the constituency is a waste of time. Lets just get on with our lives and get this over with, for whoever gets elected - Bhavin, Jordynn or Eric, we have BUSY weeks ahead of us. This is my FIRST and LAST mail about the ballot issue - my next mail, either in official capacity, or in an unofficial one, will be with regards to rallying support and consensus and opinion and discussion on the REAL ISSUES WE HAVE AT HAND. PS: Sorry Bob, for saying anything about my name being spelt incorrectly in the ballot - I should have lived with that, it makes no damn difference to the registrar community whether my name is correctly spelt or not ..... Best Regards Bhavin Turakhia Founder, CEO and Chairman DirectI -------------------------------------- http://www.directi.com Direct Line: +91 (22) 5679 7600 Direct Fax: +91 (22) 5679 7510 Board Line (USA): +1 (415) 240 4172 Board Line (India): +91 (22) 5679 7500 --------------------------------------