[council] Regarding voting rules for conflict of interest - proxies

[Gomes, Chuck]

Bruce,

I agree with you that we should consider additional special situations
with regard to voting, but we will probably have to deal with them after
we get finished with the huge current workload.

Regarding your last point, don't you think that a Councilor who is
voting per the instructions of his/her constituency should be able to
vote even if he/she may have a personal conflict of interest?  It
doesn't seem to me that a constituency (or in the future a stakeholder
group) should lose a vote because their elected councilor has a personal
conflict of interest.

Chuck 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-council at gnso.icann.org 
> [mailto:owner-council at gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Bruce Tonkin
> Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 10:05 PM
> To: Council GNSO
> Subject: [council] Regarding voting rules for conflict of 
> interest - proxies
> 
> 
> Hello All,
> 
> I see that the latest bylaw suggestions deal with voting on 
> major issues
> by those absent from a meeting.   This is a good improvement.
> 
> Has any consideration been given to situations of conflicts 
> of interest?
> 
> I can recall in the past several instances where a Council 
> member handed over a proxy to another Council member without 
> voting instructions where they felt there was a conflict of interest.
> 
> For example, at one point the GNSO Council (or it might have 
> been the DNSO Names Council at the time) voted to recommend a 
> set of criteria for the rebid of .net.  Most of the Council 
> members that could be involved in a potential bid for .net 
> abstained (including myself at the time) and handed their 
> proxies to vote as he saw fit to Alick Wilson at the time 
> (who was a nominating committee appointee).
> 
> I haven't seen an example recently where a Council member has 
> abstained from voting due to conflict of interest - but I 
> think it is worth
> considering the process around that.   Otherwise a Council member may
> feel obligated to vote on instructions from their 
> constituency even where they may have a personal conflict of interest.
> 
> Regards,
> Bruce Tonkin
> 
> 
>