[Membership] Density Representation

[Diane Cabell <cabell@mama-tech.com>]

We had a delightful and constructive meeting with Kanchana yesterday.
We reviewed the Preliminary Membership Report and she had many comments
and recommendations which I will be plugging in to it shortly.  I hope
to have the report accessible within 24 hours.

She had a most interesting idea, which is something for serious
thought.  She suggests organizing regions by density (users per capita
of the general population). In terms of the functions that ICANN
actually performs, she believes this reflects interests more accurately
and will ensure that developing users are well represented.  Voters
would only be able to vote within their own pool.  For example (and I'm
just guessing here) US, CA would be in the highest-density pool, FI, JP
in the 2nd, TH and GH in the lowest), although, as Tadao suggests, it
would not be necessary for the candidate to come from that pool.  So
Thai voters could elect someone from Finland as their representative, if
they preferred.  But no one from Finland could vote on the candidate for
the low-density pool.

This does not conform to the regional representation requirements that
presently exist in the Bylaws.  And it may not be politically
supportable since some nations in each pool might be so much more dense
that they would always win the election in that pool (e.g. there are
simply more US voters than Canadian, even if they are in the same
density pool). The question then remains whether the regional
representation requirements should overlay the density results so that
regardless of who gets the most votes in the high-density pool, no more
than 4 candidates from the same region can sit on the at large board at
one time.  Dispensing with the regional requirements entirely would
contradict last fall's delicate negotiations with NTIA.

There are some complications with this (the kinds of problems we already
have with multiple regional requirements).  It was also mandate
identifying the location of each voter.  Your thoughts on it would be
welcome.

Diane Cabell
MAC