Organizational rep/individual members in elections

[farzaneh badii]

Hi Paul

These questions need to be answered and we should come to a conlusion
hopefully, but my understanding of the situation is as I outline below.
Please see my answers inline.

Farzaneh


On Sun, Jul 22, 2018 at 12:02 PM Paul Rosenzweig <
paul.rosenzweig at redbranchconsulting.com> wrote:

> I really don't have a dog in this fight, since I am not even a voting
> individual, but only the alternate for an organization.  But a few thoughts:
>
> Would you prohibit the organizational rep from being an individual member
> as well, or merely disenfranchise him/her?
>
​
We ask the organizational rep to choose between individual membership and
organzational rep.If the person wants to be ​individual member as well,
s/he can only be the additional rep of the organization who can represent
the organization but not vote. I think this design will make it more likely
for the org reps to consult with their orgs before voting or at least have
one safeguard in place




>
> Is it unreasonable to think that an individual might have a different
> opinion in his/her personal capacity from that of the organization which
> s/he represents, such that the two votes would not be double counting?
>

​No. But also we do not want to and can't  get involved with verifying
whether they are voting based on the mandate of their org or based on their
personal decision.

Reps of organizations normally are the most involved with NCSG and its
processes. The organizations can give them the autonomy to decide based on
their best judgment on how to vote without any mandate. There is nothing
wrong with that and makes sense because the representative is the most
involved person who can decide in the best interest of the organization. I
think the problem comes from when the person can also vote in individual
capacity - so in this case the member is voting twice. It does not matter
if they have autonomy in their decision and that is given to them by the
org. But it matters if they have autonomy and also vote in individual
capacity. With autonomy in as organizational member and being an individual
member the person votes twice. No external factor to change their mind.

We cannot verify nor oblige reps of organizations to consult with their
organization before voting. But what we could do is to avoid the situation
that could potentially lead to such situations. And that is by not having
the individual member as the organizational rep.


I had some conversations with the members I apparoched and made the
examples below,

Examples:
Farzaneh is  an individual member of NCSG. Farzaneh also represents IGP on
NCSG. IGP does not have any other person involved with NCSG and does not
have a strong opinion nor  even knows the candidates - IGP allows Farzaneh
to vote at her own discretion. Farzaneh's votes will be the same as an
individual member and organizational member (there is no reason for
Farzaneh to change her mind). Farzaneh gets to vote twice.



Farzaneh is affiliated with IGP. Farzaneh is the individual member of NCSG.
IGP is also a member of NCSG being represented by another IGP affiliate.
Farzaneh has no autonomy over who IGP will vote for in this case, the IGP
rep on NCSG will consult with members and agrees on who to vote for/ or IGP
allows the rep to vote at its discretion. In this case Farzaneh's vote
might be the same as IGP vote, or it might not be.  Farzaneh will not get
to vote twice.


> If we are following this logic to its conclusion, why should the
> individuals of any organizational member have an individual vote at all?
> After all, our organizations are admitted on the basis of thinking that
> they represent their membership and are given weighted votes based on their
> size already?  Why should even the alternates (or indeed any other members)
> have a supplemental vote when they are part of the organization.
>

I am not sure how likely it is for this scenario to happen.Others who are
more experienced can let us know. But the scenario of organizational
members who are individual reps double vote is more likely to happen. If we
want to come up with a process to prevent this, we can see if it makes
sense to ask members whom their organizations are members of NCSG not to be
individual members and be additional reps of their org. But then if an
organization  has a thousand members, does that mean all of them would not
be eligible? Or just staff and leaders of the organization would not be
eligible? It gets very comlicated.



>
> By way of example -- EFFi probably has many supporters, board members, and
> staff (I pick them only b/c Tapani has named them -- not for any other
> reason).  If EFFi has a vote, why should it be allowed to "game the system"
> by having its staff/Board/funders also vote in the same way?  If we don't
> limit it, what is to stop a large organization from attempting a "take
> over."?
>
> I really don't have answers to this -- but the question is, I think, much
> more complex than we have made it out to be.
>
> Paul
>
>
> Paul Rosenzweig
> paul.rosenzweig at redbranchconsulting.com
> O: +1 (202) 547-0660
> M: +1 (202) 329-9650
> VOIP: +1 (202) 738-1739
> www.redbranchconsulting.com
> My PGP Key:
> https://keys.mailvelope.com/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x9A830097CA066684
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: NCSG-Discuss <NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU> On Behalf Of Tapani
> Tarvainen
> Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2018 9:46 AM
> To: NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
> Subject: Re: Organizational rep/individual members in elections
>
> Dear all,
>
> First full disclosure: I have been in this position in the past, voting
> both as individual member and as the representative of Electronic Frontier
> Finland (Effi). Not anymore though, after earlier controversy about it I
> asked Effi to appoint another official representative, so now I only have
> my individual vote in NCSG elections.
>
> That said, I now tend to agree that disallowing such double voting would
> be good for NCSG. But it is not quite as simple and obvious as it might
> seem at first.
>
> Besides the usefulness of adding such a rule, it is important that it
> would be done in proper order, following due process. In particular I think
> it would be inappropriate to change rules in the middle of ongoing
> election. So I think whatever is decided now should only apply to
> subsequent elections. And in implementing it we should follow our charter,
> and consider what kind of rules can and cannot be implemented without
> changing the charter.
>
> After all we're talking about disenfranchising or even removing members
> against their will, which is just about as serious as anything can be in an
> organization's rules.
>
> As a general observation: there's nothing unusual about one person having
> multiple votes or representing multiple interests in elections.
> In limited companies votes go by shares and a voter can represent multiple
> shareholders, or to pick a closer example, in GNSO council councillors can
> have a proxy vote in addition to their own. And of course in NCSG elections
> organizations already have more votes than individuals. Nor is it unheard
> of for someone to vote differently with different votes they're holding in
> the same election (indeed at least once I've voted differently with my
> individual vote than with Effi's vote in NCSG elections).
>
> There are, however, often limits on how many votes one person can have. In
> GNSO council a single councillor can only hold one proxy and thus at most
> two votes, for example. And some type of limited companies have
> restrictions too, like allowing one voter to hold at most certain
> percentage of votes. So I don't see any problem in principle for adopting
> such a rule for NCSG as well.
>
> I am not certain if it could be done without changing the charter,
> however. It might depend on how exactly it is done; depriving a member of
> their vote is a rather drastic thing to do, but perhaps making it a
> limitation on organizations' choice of their representatives would be
> easier.
>
> The more drastic option of disallowing one person even from being both
> individual member and organizational representative would also be possible,
> but considerably more complicated.
>
> One easy case is when handling new member applications, i.e., when either
> an organization in its application names a current member as its
> representative, or when an organization's representative applies for
> individual membership. In such situations NCSG EC can and should use its
> discretion to judge if it looks like just an attempt to get more votes - in
> particular if it looks like a de facto one-person organization, such an
> application could well be rejected. No new formal rules or charter changes
> would be needed, although EC could of course adopt internal guidelines for
> such situations.
>
> But when such a situation happens otherwise, when the two are already
> members, whether predating rule change or when an organization wants to
> change its representative to someone who's already an individual member, it
> becomes more difficult. It would either have to be written in member
> removal procedures that the individual membership would thereby be lost or
> as a restriction on who the organization can appoint as their
> representative. I'm not sure either could be done without changing the
> charter, nor do I think it'd be a good idea to begin with.
>
> As a practical observation, the "gaming of system" scenario would seem to
> be realistic just with such one-person organizations or cases where only
> one person in an organization is actually involved in NCSG - a large
> organization should have no trouble in selecting a representative who isn't
> an individual NCSG member.
>
> With that observation I conclude I can see no significant practical harm
> in prohibiting an individual from voting in two roles, and it would have
> definite advantages, so I'd be willing to support that.
> (I note though that formulating such a rule would take some care, but
> probably nothing really difficult.)
>
> I would not, however, want to disallow an individual member from even
> retaining their membership if they are an organization's representative at
> the same time. In particular I would not want to keep them from
> representing NCSG in working groups &c in their individual capacity.
>
> But whatever rule we choose to adopt, I would want it to be done right,
> following due process and taking care of compatibility with our charter,
> even changing it if need be. Asking ICANN legal team for an opinion about
> that might be a good idea.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Tapani Tarvainen
>
> On Jul 21 12:41, Collin Kurre (collin at ARTICLE19.ORG) wrote:
>
> > Hello Farzaneh,
> >
> > Thanks for raising this issue on the broader list.
> >
> > As you imply, one could imagine a situation where an individual member
> holds views that differ from their organization’s positions or strategies.
> Perhaps the more fundamental question is whether one person can be both an
> organizational representative and and individual member. Deciding on this
> question would preempt the need to determine whether an organizational
> opinion should invalidate the representing individual’s.
> >
> > Full disclosure: I was one of the organizational reps who was contacted
> and opted to forfeit my individual vote in the interest of fairness until
> this matter is decided by the group.
> >
> > Kind regards,
> > Collin Kurre
> >
> > --
> > Collin Kurre
> > ARTICLE 19
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > > On Jul 21, 2018, at 12:21 PM, farzaneh badii <farzaneh.badii at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > Dear all,
> > >
> > > I have sent the message below to NCSG EC and I think we need to have a
> discussion about it and make an official decision on this issue. Please
> chime in:
> > >
> > > At the moment the organizational reps who are individual members of
> NCSG can participate in the elections as both organizational rep and
> individual members. Apparently, it has been discussed repeatedly in the
> past with no decision. Other than they said it is not against the charter.
> > >
> > > Not having remembered that it has been discussed but no decision
> > > made, I started contacting those who were listed as an individual
> > > member as well as organizational rep on the check-in list and asked
> > > them to choose whether they want to be individual members or
> > > represent their organization, since being both allowed them to vote
> > > twice which I think is not acceptable for the integrity of
> > > elections. Tapani corrected me and said the issue was discussed but
> > > never decided against
> > > https://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/election-reform/2017-June/000021.htm
> > > l
> > > <https://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/election-reform/2017-June/000021.ht
> > > ml>
> > >
> > > I personally think it is unfair to allow organizational reps who are
> individual members to vote twice. This is because organizational reps
> (usually but not always) have autonomy from their organization to vote as
> they see appropriate and do not have a mandate as such. If they are also
> individual members, it provides them with the opportunity to vote twice and
> I think we need to fix it.
> > >
> > > It might be too late to do this in this election but we need to
> discuss and make a decision. I have started explaining the rationale to
> those who are organizational reps as well as individual members and asked
> them to decide what they want to do for this election voluntarily until we
> make a decision.
> > >
> > >
> > > Best
> > >
> > >
> > > Farzaneh
>
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