[chapter-delegates] Re: I object to the 2005 ISOC Nominations Committee process (was Report of the 2005 ISOC Nominations)

[Margaret Wasserman]

Hi Gene,

At 10:49 AM -0400 4/7/05, Gene Gaines wrote:
>How can nominations that did not specify whether they wished to
>serve as a representative of (a) Chapters or (b) Organizational
>Members possibly be considered as complete nominations?

I am sorry, but my wording was not accurate...  These nominations did 
not fail to specify an election, they actually specified the the 
candidate was nominated for both elections.  This was explicitly 
allowed by our Call for Nominations, which said:

     Please indicate whether you consider the nominee a candidate to be
     elected by the Organizational Members, the Chapters or both.  Although
     Trustees are selected by different constituencies, all Trustees serve
     the Internet Society; they do not serve as delegates from the
     constituency which elected or selected them.

Also, our web form offered all three choices (Chapters election, 
Organizational Member election or Both).  This process (allowing 
nominations for both elections) was the same as last year, and 
perhaps years before that.

>It appears to me the committee chose to either ignore or act
>against the wishes of Chapters.

I admit that I am not a member of an ISOC Chapter and that I do not 
have as much exposure to the Chapter delegates as you do.  There is 
no chapter in my area, but there is a group of us trying to start one.

The wishes of the Chapters in this regard may be clear to you, but I 
have not, personally, seen those wishes expressed as consistently and 
unambiguously as you seem to think that that they have been.  While 
there seem to be many chapters (primarily in Europe) who focus 
largely on public policy activities, there seem to be many other 
chapters (primarily in developing parts of the world) that are more 
focused on ISOC's educational and outreach activities.  Who knows, 
there may even be chapters who primarily care about our standards 
activities.

I would like to assure you that there were three Chapter officers on 
the nominations committee and some other chapter members (and chapter 
member wannasbes, like myself), and we did not attempt to thwart the 
wishes of the chapters or to thwart the individual wishes of you, 
Veni or anyone else who is active on the chapter list.  We also did 
not have an agenda to silence Veni, or anyone else.

The Nominations Committee considered all of the candidates who 
self-nominated or who accepted a third-party nomination, regardless 
of who nominated them.  We carefully considered all of the 
information that those candidates submitted, and we also considered 
the input that we received about each of those candidates.

We made two decisions that you may disagree with:  (1) We did not 
place any particular weight on who had nominated each candidate, and 
(2) We did not choose to automatically include the incumbent 
candidates on the slate.

The first decision is strongly implied by the ISOC selections process 
which indicates that anyone can nominate a candidate for any ISOC 
election.

While we could conceivably move to a system where candidates for the 
Chapter election can only be nominated by chapter delegates from 
active chapters (or some similar list), that is not the system that 
we have in place today.

The second decision is not, as far as I know, constrained by any of 
our written rules.  We discussed this at some length within the 
Nominations Committee, and we made the decision that (in the interest 
of fairness to the other candidates and the best interests of ISOC) 
we would consider the incumbents along with the other candidates.  Of 
course, experience serving on the ISOC Board is a valuable 
qualification, and that was considered as part of both Veni's and 
Glenn Ricart's qualifications.

In the end, the Nominations Committee chose what we believe to be the 
best candidates for the ISOC Board, considering all of their 
qualfications and our published selection criteria.

I fully understand that you do not agree with our choice.

Veni indicated in response to this message that there is no way for 
the Chapters to challenge the results of the nominations committee. 
While that may be true, there is certainly a way that the Chapter 
delegates can constructively state that there are other candidates 
that you would like to see on the ISOC elections slate -- by 
encouraging those candidates to submit petitions, and by sending 
e-mail in support of those petitions.

Best Regards,
Margaret