The voting process for the CIRA election is on for a couple more days, ending on the 29th.
As I always remark, the .CA space is quite unique in that it gives the primary stakeholders, the .CA domain registrants, unprecedented ability to shape policy via direct Board elections, yet the turnout is often fairly sparse.
One of my pet peeves with the overall structure of the Board elections has come to light with a vengeance, when I went to look at who I felt I should support this year.
I like the members’ nominated side of the ballot much more than the Nominations Committee side this year. Nothing against the NomCom, but I simply don’t know enough about many of those candidates to be able to comment intelligently on them. Yet, we can vote for up to four candidates from the NomCom side, but only one candidate from the members’ nominations.
I don’t like that, plain and simple. If you’re going to have elections, then put the candidates on the ballot and let people decide who they want. All this differentiating between “NomCom” choices and “members” choices just smells like banana republic, communist dictator jerry-rigging to me. If there’s 5 slots, then put the NomCom candidates there, put the members’ candidates there, and then let the electorate do what they’re supposed to do and sort it out with their votes.
So even though I’m supposed to pick 4 people from the Nominations Committee side, I only voted for one: Paul Andersen. He’s a friend, he’s a competitor, he’s the Chairman of the Board presently. He can always be counted on to be a voice of reason.
And even though I was only allowed to vote for one choice on the members’ candidates side, I will endorse three of them, depending on your priorities.
- I voted for Zak Muskovitch
- If you’re main concern is around technical stability issues, then Andrew Sullivan
- And Rick Anderson, also a long-time Board veteran, is always a good addition.
But as I always say each year, the important thing is to get out there and vote.
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