Vote Early, Vote Often

ICANN's At-Large Elections are now underway. If you were lucky enough to be able to get through during the registration process, and then lucky enough to actually receive your PIN in the mail, congratulations, you can vote. Click through for your FREE Slashdot voter's guide... :)

There is actually a great deal of information available about these elections and the candidates - it puts the U.S. presidential elections to shame, quite frankly.

Where to Vote: ICANN's online voting site

When to Vote: Now until midnight (GMT), Oct. 10.

Who to Vote For: That's a little less straightforward. Here's some resources to help you decide.

• CDT's Election Guide - CDT mailed a questionnaire to the candidates asking a variety of questions, their answers are online: North American thumbnail guide - North American detailed guide
• Internet Democracy Project - They also sent out a questionnaire, and the answers from all candidates have been posted. These are good questions.
• Association for Progressive Communications voting recommendations
• Berkman Center candidate forum - The Berkman Center sponsored a debate between all seven candidates (not just the ones with more than 15% of the vote, heh), Webcast it, and recorded it for your viewing pleasure. Archives are available here. While the discussion is lengthy, there's no better way to see the candidates in action.
• Dan Gillmor, columnist
• Brian Livingston, columnist - Livingston has a good summary of what is wrong with ICANN.

The groups above recommend a voting slate of Lessig first, followed by Simons, followed by Auerbach, for the North American seat (you get to rank all seven candidates in order of your preference). Here's my recommendation, slightly different from the above:

1. Auerbach - Auerbach understands DNS, and he understands the civil liberty issues, and he has paid a LOT of attention to ICANN, and he understands - right now - how to fix its main problems. The other recommended candidates (Simons and Lessig) have the potential to understand ICANN as well as he does, but he has already put in the study time! I picked Auerbach as my first choice.
2. Simons - Simons understands the civil liberty issues, and has spent a lot of time in this sort of political environment, and has the potential to understand ICANN inside and out, but she hasn't put the time in yet. I picked her second.
3. Lessig - Lessig is a smart guy. I don't think he comes with as solid a commitment to civil liberties as the others, and I don't think he has any special understanding of DNS issues. Of course he's bright enough to understand anything he puts his mind to, but why distract him from the 20 other things he's undertaking (such as joining EFF as a board member recently). Lessig gets my third choice.
4. Tiller - Tiller is sort of a wildcard. From what he says, he would be a civil-liberties oriented candidate, but I had never heard of him before the elections, so he's a bit of a dark horse to me. Still, he beats the remaining candidates hands-down.
5. Langenberg - Langenberg seems like he would be a fairly ineffective candidate, no civil liberties focus, not (obviously) captured by IP interests or anything else. But we don't need an ineffective candidate.
6. Chapin - Chapin earns the second-to-last spot. He works for Verizon and can be expected to promote policies that would benefit the major telcos, as if they didn't have enough representation already.
7. Miller - Miller is dead last. President of the ITAA, he represents all that is wrong with ICANN right now, and states flat out that he thinks they've done a great job to date and he would continue the path taken so far. If you think ICANN is right on track, vote for Miller. Bleh.

Vote!

Comments

My opinion

[harvardian]

I went to the debate at the Berkman Center (note: Langenberg did not show up, probably because it was a pay-for-yourself event, so all 7 candidates were not there), and here are my impressions of how the candidates performed live:

Auerbach: Understands the issues backwards and forwards, he's an engineer who knows what's up. My two problems with him are a) he owns so much private stuff (his own internet company or two, his wife's internet company, his stock in Oracle or whatever place he works for) that he could have some conflicts of interest, and b) he is definitely lacking in the public speaking arena. He often loses sight of the larger issues and focuses too much on the technicalities, leaving people to think sometimes "yes that's nice, but what are you talking about?" Vote for him if you insist on your candidate having the most technical knowledge possible.

Simons: she's my favorite. She understands the civil liberty issues like /. said, and I think this is the most important part. Technical information she will be able to get from people like Auerbach, and she showed that she at least has the capacity to know whom to believe (she believed Auerbach without question that we could have millions of TLDs, for example.) She'd defend slashdot-like values by far the most in my opinion.

Lessig: a reaaaaally smart guy (he was a law prof at Harvard and now Stanford), he knows what's going on legally. What's more he understands perfectly his vision of ICANN and its legal implications -- specifically that ICANN should keep its focus extremely narrow in order to increase its mandate. My problem with him is that I don't agree with making ICANNs scope so narrow. When it comes to trademark disputes, for example, Lessig was dissapointed in ICANNs trademark board, he says this should be the role of government, while Simons said that while she agrees, the ICANN trademark board is far superior to existing structures and therefore should be kept. I think Lessig is obsessed too much with keeping down ICANN to its original and extremely limited charter and doesn't understand how ICANN will have to grow with the times.

Tiller: /. was very right in calling this guy a wildcard. He believes SOLELY in representing the masses. Not the educated masses, the masses. He reminds me of Bush. If you vote for him know that he will only take into view what joe sixpack will want. I also wasn't convinced at all that he understands the legal issues involved. At least he was open-minded and nice.

Langenberg: wasn't at the debate so I have no idea.

Chapin: He's a very smart guy, and his views are actually pretty good. But as /. says working for Verizon disqualifies him.

Miller: this guy sucked my ass. He's annoying as hell, he would interrrupt people, and he has absolutely NO idea what he's talking about. He's nervous and he gibbers and he managed to piss most of the panel off because of his intense incompetence. Vote for this guy if you want a lemming politician who understands less than nothing.

Why you should vote for Barbara Simons

[Ellen Spertus]

Some reasons to vote for Barbara Simons:

1. Decades of activism: Barbara Simons has received the highest activist awards (EFF Pioneer 1998, CPSR Weiner Award 1992).

2. Leadership: Led the ACM (president 1998-2000) and USACM. Of all the nominees, I think she has the strongest proven ability to deal effectively with committees and opponents both in and out of government.

3. Computer science expertise: She has a CS PhD from Berkeley, has held senior research positions, been made a fellow of the ACM, AAAS, etc.