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| RALO | Name of BMSPC Member | Position |
|---|---|---|
| AFRALO | Tijiani Ben Jemaa | Chair |
| AFRALO | Baudouin Schombe | Member |
| APRALO | Fouad Bajwa | Member |
| APRALO | Maureen Hilyard | Member |
| EURALO | Oksana Pryhodko | Member |
| EURALO | Rudi Vansnick | Member |
| LACRALO | Jose Arce | Member |
| LACRALO | Dev Anand Teelucksingh | Member |
| NARALO | Eduardo Diaz | Member |
| NARALO | Darlene Thompson | Member |
Introduction
The 2014 selection of the At-Large Board Director (seat 15) was a very good example where we had a complete case with a first round and a 2 parts second round. We also encountered particular cases that needed diligences.
This report is to highlight all the issues met during the selection process and to recommend possible solutions that will make the upcoming selections easier to handle and accepted by everyone.
Replacement of the defective members of the BCEC / BMSPC
The BMSPC recommends that the RoP be amended to permit the selection of 3 persons (instead of 2) from each RALO for each of the BCEC and the BMSPC: 2 as members and one as alternate who can step in to replace a member who is not participating properly.
Kickoff of the selection process
For the 2014 selection, the starting date of the whole selection process was 24 September 2013, almost 13 months prior to the 2014 GA. Roberto Gaetano, the 2014 BCEC Chair proposes that it must be 5 to 8 months earlier (First ICANN meeting Y-1), and he suggests that the timeline should avoid to have critical actions to be done in holiday periods worldwide, not just the western world.
The BMSPC recommends that the RoP be amended to specify that the second meeting (Meeting B) of Y-1 (20 months prior to the director handover) shall be the starting point of the whole process (selecting the Chairs of BMSPC and BCEC, and establishment of the timeline), and that this process shall avoid any activity during holiday periods worldwide.
Confidentiality
The BMSPC recommends that
Sharing the EoI of the candidates with the referees
The BMSPC recommends
360° evaluation
An important piece of information is the 360° evaluation of the incumbent candidate. Roberto Gaetano believes that if the Board is unable to provide this information in a timely manner, the evaluation of the previous year has to be provided instead.
The BMSPC recommends the inclusion in the Guidelines document that ALAC Chair, under the request of the BCEC Chair, sends a request to the ICANN Board chair to provide the 360° evaluation on time.
Referees
The BMSPC recommends to include in the RoP that a referee can provide reference to only one candidate, and cannot participate in the 360° evaluation.
Technology
Roberto Gaetano gave a list of Technical problems faced during the 2014 selection process.
The BMSPC recommends that such technical problems should be addressed ASAP and tested prior to the starting date of next 2017 selection. Those tests that shall be undertaken prior to each selection process should be included in the Guidelines document. See Roberto’s list of the problems faced (attached)
Communication between the candidates and the At-Large Community
The first BMSPC call decided that the At-Large community, and the electorate members in particular, could ask questions to the candidates through the mailing list and the wiki page only. The proposal of a live call was rejected.
This made some of the candidates very upset. A second BMSPC teleconference allowed for a call to be organized for live interaction.
The BMSPC recommends that practical procedure for communication between the at-large community and the candidates for their campaigns prior to the first round of the selection should be included in the guideline document. Such practical procedure will ensure that all the subsequent selections (2017, 2020,…) use the same communication tools and process.
Proxy use
Jean Jacques Subrenat argued that since he was dropped from the first round, he should be allowed to recover his voting right instead of the proxy chosen by EURALO to replace him.
This was a serious problem for the BMSPC because the new rules didn’t address this possibility. More over, the NARALO selected 2 Proxies to replace Alan Greenberg and Evan leibovitch without specifying who is replacing whom. If we had accepted the request of Jean Jacques, we would have been obliged to do the same for Evan, but we did not know who was the replacement for Evan
The ICANN Bylaws stipulates that “no person who serves in any capacity (including as a liaison) on any Supporting Organization Council shall simultaneously serve as a Director or liaison to the Board. If such a person accepts a nomination to be considered for selection by the Supporting Organization Council or the At-Large Community to be a Director, the person shall not, following such nomination, participate in any discussion of, or vote by, the Supporting Organization Council or the committee designated by the At-Large Community relating to the selection of Directors by the Council or Community, until the Council or committee(s) designated by the At-Large Community has selected the full complement of Directors it is responsible for selecting”.
Besides, Alan Greenberg and Cheryl L. Orr propose that we modify the RoP to make the vote of the replacement of an electorate member, who is unable to vote and who is not candidate, directed by the replaced person.
The BMSPC recommends that:
Voting method
No mention in the RoP of the voting method(s) to be used for the selection. The BMSPC received remarks (not real complaints but strong remarks) regarding the use of the Instant Runoff Vote method for the first round to rank the candidates. It is clear that the voting method couldn’t be the same when we have to shorten the list of candidates and when we have to choose between 2 candidates only. Several methods exist:
i. Single Transferable Vote (STV).
ii. Preferential vote
iii. Instant Runoff Vote (IRV)
iv. Simple majority vote
v. Etc.
The BMSPC believes that the right voting method for each phase of the selection should be well identified according to the goal of the considered phase. Consulting an expert in voting systems seems to be a wise approach to find the best method for each phase.
The voting methods should be included in the guidelines document.
First round
The rule 19 of the ALAC RoP stipulates that we cannot declare at the conclusion of the first round a candidate as winner even if he/she got more than 50% of the vote cast.
The BMSPC thinks that even if the first round is intended to shorten the list to 3 candidates only, it should permit to declare a candidate winner if he/she collects more than 50% of the votes. The selection process should be terminated in this case. The BMSPC recommends that the RoP be modified accordingly.
Ties breaks
This is also one of the problems faced during the 2014 selection. When we had a tie between Sébastien Bachollet and Alan Greenberg, we ran a tie-breaking vote between the 2 tied candidates. Alan Greenberg argued that we should run it between the 3 candidates (including Rinalia Abdulrahim who had a better score). The RoP says that tie-breaking vote can’t be run more than once in each voting step. That means that if the results don’t change after a tie-breaking vote, we will break the tie using a random method.
The tie may happen at several points of the selection process:
The BMSPC proposes that the tie breaking process must be clearly detailed in the RoP.
Publishing the intermediate results
Alan Greenberg believes that the intermediate results for each phase of the selection process should be published. He finds it more transparent and helpful for the voters to make their choice for the next phase.
The BMSPC recommend that any consensus in this regard should be included in the RoP