Indirect elections appear to provide greater stability to an organization because they serve as a filtering mechanism that can improve the quality of the directors selected. Under this approach as it was originally proposed by ICANN, members would elect an At Large Council, which would in turn select the At Large Directors.
The overriding problem of indirect elections is that they dramatically dampen down the sense of public participation in the selection process. Voters are selecting only someone who will do the actual selection. This is likely, in the ICANN context, to depress participation and to weaken the sense of public involvement in the organization. In this sense as well, it fails a fundamental test: the purpose of elections in ICANN is not just to select directors but also provide a sense of participation and empowerment. Indirect elections are unlikely to do that.
Finally, while they lack most of the advantages of direct elections, they do have many of the same flaws. Indirect elections raise comparable problems of fraud and authentication, as well as being equally (if not more) expensive. Further, they present heightened concerns of capture because a relatively small number of members of the intermediary body would control the selection of all directors.
| 3.3.3.4 At Large Directors selected by the ICANN board | 3.3.4 Conclusion |
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