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Original question:

Richard Henderson posted this question following the resignation of Michael Geist from the Panel.

I have written to Michael personally, and I hope he will continue to use his insights in the furtherance of the At Large cause and User representation.

This resignation brings to a head the need to place decision-making authority back in the hands of our whole membership. I'm inviting Joop Teernstra to set The Polling Booth in action as soon as possible, to enable ordinary members to set their own questions to our community, vote on those questions, and help define and determine the future direction of our organisation.

Only when we know what individual members actually want from this group can we press forward and authorise a mission statement and a set of policy goals/ actions.

It is absolutely clear to me that this panel (including me) has failed to move our agenda on, grinding to inertia over the uncertainties of who we are and what we actually want. It seems clear to me that the panel cannot now claim credibility, when so many of the original elected representatives have resigned, and others just 'turn off the radio' and stop communicating or even voting.

I think we have two choices with regard to the Panel :

1. We soldier on, and try to replace the resigned members with 'the people who came next' in the election, which is the process that should be followed, according to the election rules.

2. We agree to resign and call for new elections, to introduce a fresh intake of panelists, who will hopefully participate more regularly than parts of this panel have.

At the present time, none of these is as important to me, as going back to the membership and creating a democratic mechanism for real participation. I believe that the Polling Booth will help ordinary individual members to ask questions (phrased as they themselves wish), and will enable them to vote on these questions, which will help us to define the wishes and direction of this organisation in a truly democratic manner.

I also feel it is time to ask the membership themselves whether they want this Panel to continue, or whether they want fresh elections. This could be one of the first questions in the Polling Booth.

As a 'bottom up' organisation calling for representation and democracy in ICANN, we should be creating protocols and using technology, that empowers the whole membership to determine the direction of *THEIR* org.

With the abdication of so many originally elected panel members... Vivek Durai, Michael Geist, Joanna Lane, Judith Oppenheimer, and an enigmatic silence from Satyajit, not to mention the failure of two other panelists to vote... I turn to the membership to reclaim their organisation, and I will endorse the use of the full membership e-mail list to contact all members and enlist them in the Polling Booth for some democratic decision making.

I doubt if the Panel at present can even raise a quorum to vote for its own termination.

It's time for the membership to do the voting instead.

Democracy is its authority.

Richard H

PS. Jamie Love also resigned last night.

Do we need elections for a new Panel?

Total number of voters: 104

• If members are sitting on board seats and not voting or communicating, perhaps it is up to the board to remove them by a board level vote. Let the members elect a new seat if needed. The last vote was long ago, and new names should be voted next.
• What is the value of working on a board which has no authority, and no ability to create real change? Authority comes from investment in the organization by the members, not merely from voting.
• That was our defined process.
• If our membership wants to call fresh elections, I support that principle. 5 of the original panel of 11 have now resigned, and a 6th panellist has been out of touch for months. New elections would seem appropriate very soon.
• A bad time for doing it
• Simultaneously vote on retention of interested and active panel members and new candidates to fill vacancies.
• I have follow from IDNO, DNSO to here. Salute to you to take up the post :) Electing a new Panel will only only reset the 'becking' button and start the chaos again. I am still waiting till now for a clear defination of the agenda of the @Large...
• Richard, what you have said is common sense democracy: when the elected administrators reach an impasse there can be no other recourse than to the membership as a whole.
• If panelists have begun to resign, the entire panelists should take stock, come up with a statement, and resign as a whole, defining on what new issues will the vote be held?
• Before holding new elections, the question of how to organize ourselves should be settled

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