Some in the ICANN community liked the notion of indirect elections of the At-Large Board Members through an At-Large Council, because this would guard against the threat of derivative suits and would create a more deliberative setting for selecting directors than an direct popular election would provide. Many others attacked the plan as an effort to hijack the broad Internet user voice in ICANN, reasoning that no one would participate in a body that only provided rights to select individuals who would in turn select policy-makers. According to this critique, indirect elections also would result in no direct lines of accountability between the ICANN Board and the "public."
At its March 2000 meeting in Cairo, the ICANN Board faced intense pressure to scrap the indirect election plan proposed by staff and hold direct At-Large elections. Advocates for the direct model argued that it offered enhanced accountability and legitimacy for a Board that, it was felt by some, was lacking in both. Ultimately, the Board accepted the validity of the direct election model and passed a compromise resolution, Resolution 00.18-also termed the "Cairo Compromise."
Resolution 00.18 instructed staff to draft bylaws amendments that would:
Instead of filling all nine Directors at once, the compromise stated that only five would be elected in 2000, after which the election process would be studied before future action. At the time, the compromise seemed acceptable to most parties; direct democracy advocates avoided setting a precedent of indirect elections and placed five elected Directors on the Board, while those with stability concerns were assured that, should the election go badly, the five At-Large Directors would constitute a minority of the nineteen-member Board.
At the Yokohama meeting in July 2000, however, the spirit of the "Cairo Compromise" was revisited.
| 1.2.5 The At-Large Council Concept | 1.2.7 The Bylaws Amendments in Yokohama |
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