#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.