#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!