2.1.1. Limitations Faced by the ICANN Election

The 2000 ICANN election broke new ground not just for ICANN as an organization, but for the world as a whole. While, for ICANN, the election was an untested first attempt at representing the public interest through election of Directors, for the world the election was an untested attempt at a fully online, truly global election of unknown size and scope. The experience of the election offered insight into the core strengths and weaknesses of such an election.

In the offline world, certain elements are considered baseline components of any legitimate election. For example, we generally assume that, in a given political election, it's possible to know with reasonable certainty who the electorate is and is not, and that each of the voters is a verifiable human being. We assume that elections takes place in an environment where rules and laws will define appropriate behavior, and that those rules and laws will be enforceable by some authority (usually the state).

But these assumptions do not apply to the online world in which the 2000 ICANN election took place. In an environment unbounded by the rules of physical space, simple tasks like verifying that a given voter registration represents a real, unique individual become much more difficult. Similarly, there is no single authority capable of enforcing rules on a global electorate. National laws are unique and are likely to offer little help in establishing a single rule set for an online ICANN election.

These difficulties made the 2000 ICANN election into a series of trade-offs. Authentication of voters - and therefore protection from "ballot-stuffing" and other fraudulent activities - was sacrificed to keep election expenses manageable and registration globally accessible. Rules were limited and, of necessity, self-enforcing.

These and other limitations of online, global elections make the questions that ICANN faces all the more difficult to answer, and should be kept in mind as we look towards future participation in ICANN.

2.1. Cross-Regional Elements: Board and staff election administration

2.1.2. Description of the 2000 Election