[Chapter-delegates] Candidates for the 2021 ISOC Board of Trustees Elections

[Andrew Sullivan]

Dear colleagues,

There is a small technical adjustment that should be made to the description of what the Organizational Members are voting for, and a little reminder also about another plan the Trustees have announced.  This will seem picky, but I want it to be clear for the record so that nobody misunderstands the Board as having done anything beyond what is authorized in the Bylaws.

On Fri, Feb 12, 2021 at 04:00:39PM -0500, George Sadowsky wrote:

>One of the two Organization Member seats will include the usual three-year term of office. The other seat was recently filled on a temporary basis after the resignation of a Trustee originally elected for a three-year term in 2019. This seat will include a one-year term.

As a strict matter of the Internet Society bylaws, the second seat (for which there is now an election for a one-year term) is actually vacant right now.  This vacancy was created when Mieke van Heesewijk stepped down. The Board at that time appointed another Trustee to the Board, to make the full complement of 12 Trustees.  In order to reflect the spirit of having four Trustees appointed by the Organizational Members, they appointed the same person who received the second most votes in the Organizational Member election.  They did this because Mieke's announcement came after the call for nominations had already happened, and the Bylaws are not clear about what to do in such a case.  This (current) election is the one that the Bylaws clearly state shall fill that vacant seat, and the term shall be shortened to return the vacancy for that seat to its usual cadence.  This is just a technicality about how the Bylaws work, but I just didn't want anyone to get the wrong impression.

>Chapters Election (one seat available)

As a reminder, the Board has already announced that it will select the runner-up from this race and appoint that person as a Trustee for one year, as though to fill the open seat recently vacated by Olga Cavalli's resignation.  Again, that resignation came after the call for nominations, and the Bylaws are not perfectly clear what to do in this case, so the other Trustees have committed to appointing the runner-up from the Chapters Election for one year.  This is exactly what was done last year for the Organizational Members slate.  In the normal course of things, the seat Olga has vacated would be up for election next year anyway, so there will be nothing surprising about that vacancy then.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
President & CEO, Internet Society
sullivan at isoc.org
+1 416 731 1261