CIRA Board Election: Who I'm voting for & why

Voting just started today in the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) board election. I currently plan to vote for these candidates:

Members' Slate:
- Frank Michlick

Nomination Committee Slate:
- Lee Dale
- Rowena Liang
- my third choice not decided yet

All candidates' info is linked from this CIRA page. Voting ends next Thursday (Sept 29) at noon Pacific time. I will update this post if I change my choices. If you're a CIRA member, you should receive an email from CIRA today with a link to their voting page.

As when I posted on last year's election: "My research is not very deep, but there seems to be a lack of candidate assessments available online, so I'm trying to help fill that gap."

This year, my voting is based mainly on the online Campaign Forum, where some important issues were debated. I think accountability of the board to the membership and to the Canadian internet community is crucial, so I paid close attention to these two threads:

- CIRA as a Membership Based Organization

- Changing CIRA's Board Selection Process

I welcome your comments, advice, info etc!

CIRA Election Forum

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is holding its annual board election. In the election campaign's online forum, there's an interesting thread on CIRA as a Membership Based Organization. Yesterday I posted a comment there; I'm reposting it below (with better links) followed by some further thoughts. So although the election forum will be closed to comments after tomorrow noon (Eastern Time) when voting starts, we can continue discussing here.

#CIRAelection: Why I'm voting for Moll, Geist, Sandiford and maybe Finckelstein

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is holding its annual board election. I'm voting for these candidates:

Members' Slate:
- Marita Moll

Nomination Committee Slate:
- Michael Geist
- Bill Sandiford
- Konrad von Finckelstein (maybe?)

If you're a CIRA member, you can vote Sept 16 - 23 (deadline: noon Pacific time Sept 23). You'll need your Voter ID and PIN from the email CIRA sent you today (Sept 16). Anyone with a .ca domain can join CIRA for free at cira.ca/membership and vote next year.

How I choose who to vote for:

My research is not very deep, but there seems to be a lack of candidate assessments available online, so I'm trying to help fill that gap.

I try to guess which candidates are more likely to advocate in the broad public interest, rather than for the interests of industry or themselves or their friends. I also look for some knowledge of internet issues, including privacy, technology, security, economics, business, politics etc.

My sources include the candidates' statements and résumés (linked from cira.ca/election), the election campaign forum, perspectives from OpenMedia.ca (internet public interest advocacy organization), a former CIRA board member, and various others.

I'm uncertain about my third choice on the nom-com slate. Konrad von Finckelstein is former chair of the CRTC, so has a wealth of relevant experience. Could he be too much of an insider? Hard to guess. Here are two perspectives on him, pro and con:

Pro -- openmedia.ca/node/3548

Con -- rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/openmediaca/2014/07/has-crtc-really-changed-will-they-listen-to-canadians-or-telecom-

What do you think? Comments welcomed! 

How to improve CIRA's election process:

There is not enough voter engagement, nor enough sources of insightful assessments of the candidates. I have recommended various improvements to CIRA, so instead of repeating them I'll link to them:

1. The latter half of this blog post.

2. The paper We Want Our Co-ops Back.

#CIRA election: Why I'm voting for @KevinSMcArthur, Jim Grey, Ryan Merkley, Ruth Corbin

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is holding its annual board election. I'm voting for these candidates:

Members' Slate:
- Kevin McArthur

Nomination Committee Slate:
- Jim Grey
- Ryan Merkley
- Ruth Corbin

If you're a CIRA member, you can vote Sept 16 - 23 (deadline: 11am Pacific time Sept 23). If you have a .ca domain, you can join CIRA for free at cira.ca/membership (and vote next year).

How I chose who to vote for:

I based my decision mainly on how the candidates participated in the election forum.

I especially like Kevin McArthur's advocacy of board transparency, which I strongly support as a way of increasing accountability of CIRA to its members and to the Canadian public. I voted for Kevin in 2012 and 2011 for similar reasons.

As for the Nomination Committee's candidates, my preference tipped toward Grey and Merkley for their replies to the forum question on what to do with CIRA's financial surplus, and toward Corbin for participating in the forum and not giving responses that I found disappointing.

How to improve CIRA's election process:

There is not enough voter engagement, nor enough sources of insightful assessments of the candidates. (There should be much more insight available than my blog post above, but if it's out there I can't find it.)

I have been recommending various improvements to CIRA, so instead of repeating them I'll link to them:

1. The latter half of this blog post last year.

2. The paper We Want Our Co-ops Back.

@MEC @Vancity #CIRA boards unwilling to restore accountability to members

Last year, I studied the trend toward violating the second fundamental principle of co-operatives -- democratic member control -- as co-ops become large. As examples, I focused on three organizations: Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC), Vancity Credit Union, and the Canadian Internet Registration Authority. (CIRA, which manages the .ca domain, is not formally a co-op but faces similar issues of accountability.)

I wrote a detailed exposé of how these organizations' boards have been changing the rules in ways that shift power to themselves by reducing their accountability to members, while maintaining a facade of democracy -- see We Want Our Co-ops Back at votermedia.org/publications. Last September I announced the first draft on this blog and on Twitter, and emailed it to all three boards, inviting feedback. Here I'll report how they have responded so far.

To make it easier for them to give at least a partial response in the near term, in December I suggested that they focus on just two practical reform questions:

1. Do you plan to create a year-round online member forum?
2. Do you plan to create a competition for informing members, in which members vote to allocate award funds?
For both these questions: If so, when? If not, why not?

Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC):

#CIRA Election: Who I plan to vote for

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is holding its annual board election. I'm planning to vote for these candidates:

Members' Slate:
- Michael Geist
- Kevin McArthur

Nomination Committee Slate:
- William Gibson
- Bill Sandiford
- Dave Chiswell

If you're a CIRA member, you can vote Sept 19 - 26 (deadline: 9am Pacific time Sept 26). If you have a .ca domain, you can join CIRA or check your membership status at cira.ca/membership.

How I chose who to vote for:

My professional expertise is accountability of elected leaders to voters, in all types of voter communities, from democracies to corporations. Like most large organizations, I find CIRA rather lacking in accountability (reasons are in this paper). So I looked for director candidates who give priority to that.

In particular, I focused on candidates' responses to these questions in the recent campaign forum:

- Question concerning Governance Reform

- Year-round CIRA members forum

- Critique of CIRA governance

I especially appreciate Michael Geist's emphasis on upholding the public interest -- mentioned 6 times in his nominee statement. He's an experienced CIRA director, and a law professor at Carleton University with a well deserved reputation for public interest advocacy in internet law and policy.

In addition to his technical expertise, Kevin McArthur has some great accountability planks in his campaign platform. My favourite: "Advance a transparency culture at CIRA by removing bylaws that censor the disagreements of board members."

William Gibson would bring his valuable experience from chairing the board at Mountain Equipment Co-op. Among the nomination committee nominees, he was perhaps the most responsive in the campaign forum, especially on my proposal to create a year-round online forum for CIRA members.

You can see that my voting this year is consistent with last year -- see my post on the 2011 CIRA election.

I plan to wait until the last day to vote, so I can learn from others' opinions. Please comment below or by email to mark[at]votermedia.org. I thank all candidates for offering to serve CIRA and Canada's internet!

We Want Our Co-ops Back @MEC @Vancity #CIRA

Today I released the first draft of my paper We Want Our Co-ops Back, along with a spreadsheet Co-op Democracy Scorecard. From the paper:

We can reform all our large voter organizations, including democracies and corporations, by starting with reforming our co-ops (including financial co-ops such as credit unions). Most large institutions lack effective democratic control by voters. Even though citizens of democracies can vote, corporate shareowners can vote, and co-op members can vote, those voting rights are ineffective if voters lack the information, insight and nomination rights necessary to elect the best leaders. This paper outlines how we can better implement the fundamental co-op principle of democratic member control, even when co-ops grow very large. Later we can apply these ideas to our democracies and corporations.

This paper proposes rules to improve the democratic accountability of co-op leaders to members, organized in nine topic sections. To contrast these proposals with existing rules, I cite examples from three Canadian organizations where I am a member: Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC), Vancity Credit Union, and the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA).

I welcome your comments!

Keep Canada's internet democratic: Oppose #CIRA insiders' power grab proposal @OpenMedia_ca

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority's board is proposing to eliminate CIRA members' right to nominate directors. Instead, the board-appointed Nomination Committee would decide which candidates would be on the ballot. I'm amazed to see such an anti-democratic move. It's like what we just saw at Mountain Equipment Co-op.

Fortunately, CIRA is inviting advance comment on the board's proposal, via email to governance@cira.ca before May 2, 2012. Detailed info is at http://cira.ca/legal/governance/, especially page 3 of this document. I'm emailing them this blog post:

Thank you for requesting member feedback on this important governance proposal. I especially appreciate your advance notice to members, which lets us discuss the issue well in advance of voting on it. This contrasts with the recent move by Mountain Equipment Co-op's board -- see my post-mortem blog post at http://votermedia.blogspot.ca/2012/04/mountain-equipment-co-op-agm-democracy.html.

I hope you drop this proposal. But if you do submit it to CIRA members for a vote, I strongly urge you to open an online members' forum where we can discuss it with each other well in advance. And I urge you to include a link/reference to the members' discussion from the ballot and from any voting info you circulate.

As I read the proposal, it seems that you are proposing that we members should give up our right to nominate board candidates without screening by a board-appointed nomination committee. I think that's a very bad idea, so I would oppose it.

I think this proposal would concentrate too much power in the incumbent board (or rather, whatever majority currently dominates the board), thus disempowering CIRA members and making the board less accountable to members. Accountability to members is the best way I know to ensure that CIRA is run in the best interests of Canadians generally.

Lack of accountability of elected leaders (in governments and in corporations) is the main root cause of our recent financial crisis. So it is clearer than ever that we should strengthen accountability, not weaken it by letting incumbents control the nomination of their own successors.

There are better ways to make sure we get excellent people onto the CIRA board, while simplifying the process and improving accountability to members. I would suggest we do something like this:

- Continue to let both the nominating committee and the general membership nominate board candidates.

- Don't separate the nominees into two slates as we are doing now.

- Expand the online election candidate forum to enable us members to communicate with each other as well as with the candidates.

- Let the nominating committee express their opinions on candidates in the online forum, but not on the ballot. Let all of us members express our opinions on candidates in the online forum.

- Change the ballot to a preferential one where we rank our favoured candidates 1, 2, 3 etc. Determine the winners by Single Transferable Vote. This would ensure a broad representation of various member interests, while reducing vote-splitting, wasted votes, and the need for strategic voting.

- Ensure free speech for all candidates and directors, especially for those who criticize CIRA's current policies. We members need this for accountability.

- To help voters process info about candidates, let voters allocate at least $10,000 per election among blogs competing to provide insightful coverage of the candidates. The effectiveness of this "votermedia" system is described in these two blog posts, along with the reasons for similar reform proposals at MEC and Vancity:

http://votermedia.blogspot.ca/2012/03/how-i-plan-to-vote-in-mountain.html

http://votermedia.blogspot.ca/2012/04/vancity-credit-union-election-who-i.html

As I'm sure you know, other CIRA members also strongly oppose this proposal -- see for example http://www.unrest.ca/cira-governance

I'm posting this email on my blog at http://votermedia.blogspot.ca

Feel free to contact me to discuss any of this. Again, thank you for your work on this important issue!

Mark Latham

#CIRA Election: Who I plan to vote for

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is holding its annual board election:

Sept 13 - 20: Candidates online forum

Sept 20: Annual General Meeting & Symposium (free & open to public)

Sept 21 - 28: Online voting

As a CIRA member, I've been participating in the campaign forum. As in many large democratic organizations, member engagement and voter turnout are low. This is a problem that votermedia is designed to help solve, so I have focused my participation on the issue of voter information and engagement (here and here).

I'm planning to vote for these candidates:

Members' Slate: Kevin McArthur

Nomination Committee Slate:
Kerry Brown
Bill Gibson
Gary Evans
[2011-09-26 update: Michael Geist's post today has raised my opinion of Bill St.Arnaud. So I now plan to vote for Kerry Brown plus 2 of these 3: Bill St.Arnaud, Bill Gibson and Gary Evans.]

These may not be my final choices. Voting is Sept 21 - 28, so I have time to gather more insight which may change my mind. I don't consider myself especially well informed. I'm posting this in the hope of receiving comments etc from people more informed than I. My main role in votermedia is not blogging -- it's building a system to support and encourage blogging that benefits the community.

I have asked for candidate reviews from people whose views I respect, and so far have received these replies:

From Michael Geist, 2011-09-17:

I'll likely post an endorsement of some kind once the election launches.

[2011-09-26 update: See Michael Geist's post today.]

From Steve Anderson, Executive Director, OpenMedia.ca, 2011-09-18:

I haven't studied the candidates yet - if I come up with a list I feel confident in endorsing I will let you know.

What I can say is that I will vote for and endorse Kevin [McArthur]. He's a long time advocate and active contributor on key issues like Net Neutrality, UBB, and lawful Access. You're welcome to make my endorsement of Kevin public.

If/when I hear more from them, I'll add a comment below and/or edit this post. Meanwhile, here are some reasons why I'm choosing the above candidates:

Kevin McArthur is my clearest choice. He is supported by Steve Anderson. He has been very active in the campaign forum. I like his proactive policy advocate approach to the director's role, as well as the policies he advocates. And his technical expertise seems at least stronger than my ability to assess it.

Kerry Brown has been active in the campaign forum and in his thoughtful blog. His technical knowledge and experience seem strong. I know enough about governance to say that I find his discussions of it intelligent and balanced.

Bill Gibson's track record at MEC looks strong, and very relevant to a large democratic organization with low voter engagement.

Gary Evans is a governance specialist. That alone would not get my support, since many conventional governance models are not worth the time and effort, in my view. But Gary has an eclectic scope that includes some worthwhile approaches, so I think his contribution would be valuable. I should confess a personal bias here: I found one of my publications on his course reading list, and on my suggestion he has added another one. Anyone who agrees with me I find particularly intelligent! ;-)

BTW I also have a positive impression of François Vidal, with his experience on the board of a large nonprofit (Hostelling International - Canada) and for improving CIRA's representation of Quebec.

Anyway, I hope this post will prompt some more enlightening links and comments on who we should vote for and why, from other CIRA members, board candidates, and anyone with insight and/or interest. Please comment below or by email to mark[at]votermedia.org. You could also add a link in the comment thread at https://elections.cira.ca/2011/campaign/topic/7/en.

See you at the Sept 20 AGM!