Page History

I am not making any changes to the document itself yet, pending the call.
First, the Rules of Procedure.

There appear to be no issues with the existing forms of sections 1, 2 and 4.
Section 3 drew the most comment, and indeed needs editing because of explicit holes in the existing draft.

Here is my suggested wording, incorporating comments by Alan and Olivier and maybe the odd thought of my own. For one, I suggest the word "ballot" rather than "slate" because the latter usually means one or more people elected together:

3.1: The ABSC is responsible for soliciting and accepting nominations from individuals for the position of At-Large Director, for evaluation of the nominations, and the creation of a ballot of candidates from which one will be elected by ALAC members and RALO chairs.

3.2 The central rationale behind the existence of the ABSC is twofold:

3.2.1: The Committee is to identify candidates who would each make an excellent At-large Director. It is to seek out and put forward nominees who have the highest integrity and capability, who are knowledgeable about both ICANN’s and At Large's mission and environment. and who are best able to articulate and advance the views and needs of the global community of Internet end-users to the ICANN Board.

3.2.2: The Committee has a responsibility to keep the size of the ballot to a reasonable number, even it receives a large number of eligible nominations. Keeping the ballot to a reasonable size allows the candidates to be more effectively evaluated during the election process. While the size of the ballot is not specified, at least one candidate must be named, and it is not expected that the ballot created by the Committee will often exceed four candidates.

3.3 To achieve this broad At-Large public-interest orientation, members of ABSC are drawn from across the At-Large Community. They are to act only on behalf of the interests of the global Internet community in general and the At-Large Community in particular within the scope of the ICANN mission and the responsibilities assigned to the ALAC by ICANN Bylaws. As representatives of the At-Large constituency in ICANN, ABSC members are responsible to At-Large, to work by consensus to determine the ballot of candidates. The Committee is allowed, and indeed encouraged, to identify people both inside and outside the formal ICANN At-Large Community, and to produce a ballot that represents the diversity associated with the global community of Internet end-users.

3.4 The ABSC functions independently from other ICANN committees, but acts within parameters defined by the ALAC. The ABSC selections are final and may not be appealed; no further approval or ratification is needed.

Regarding section 5 there seems to be general agreement that the list of receiving candidate names (and a subset of their SOIs) be published. Candidates must be aware of this at the time nominations are submitted.

To this end, I suggest a modification to 5.2:

5.2 A list of candidates names and portions of their Statement of Interest that are not of a personal nature will be published and made publicly available. ABSC members will not disclose outside of the Committee any personal details nominees as was as any discussions, deliberations, communications, records or notes, regarding the creation of the ballot.

Regarding the Statement of Interest ... I disagree strongly with Tijani's points that the nominations may only come from within existing At-Large participants. That's what elections are for. We provide some who are familiar, some who are not, then let the voting process do its job.

I believe that statements in the Operating procedures (specifically 3.2.1) do a reasonable job of broadly explaining what will be expected of a winning candidate.
The goal of the SOI answers – and subsequent interviews – exist in order to fulfill the requirements of 3.2.1. I don't believe that we need to be more restrictive than that in the original requirements for nominees. Someone who is a very good user advocate who is unfamiliar with At-Large is at least deserves our initial consideration, and possibly a place on the ballot.

I'm hesitant to do new wording here until this is resolved.

• Evan