[ARIN-consult] Consultation on Implementing Single Transferrable Voting for ARIN Elections

Sat Jan 22 13:15:36 EST 2022

(Can’t find the right message to reply to… and I’m replying wearing the wrong hat… oh well.  I’ve got the same view under each hat, anyway.)

I strongly agree with Owen – one of my upstreams at $DAYJOB, a significant regional LIR in their own right, has no employees whatsoever (as in, zero): everyone involved is either a contractor or a (volunteer) board member.  They’re a perfectly valid legal entity here, they’re a member of ARIN in good standing, and their stakeholder community (which includes me, wearing my work hat) deserves a vote.  The non-employee who would normally be tasked (by the non-employee board) with voting is a contractor.

Restricting voters to employees might have some benefits, but it would also utterly disenfranchise a non-trivial number of ARIN members, which is unacceptable in both Canadian and American philosophies of governance.  (I don’t know enough about the various Caribbean political philosophies to comment about them.)

Marla’s arguments appear to come from an unfamiliarity with the diversity of organizational (and taxation!) structures that exist within ARIN’s membership.  I agree with Paul here, that attempting to enforce any voter restrictions at the ARIN level would be, in any practical sense, unfeasible.

-Adam Thompson

From: ARIN-consult <arin-consult-bounces at arin.net> On Behalf Of Paul Andersen
Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2022 10:55 AM
To: Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com>; Azinger, Marla <Marla.Azinger at FTR.com>; arin-consult at arin.net
Subject: Re: [ARIN-consult] Consultation on Implementing Single Transferrable Voting for ARIN Elections

There are some good arguments on both sides; however, I see a pragmatic problem of enforcement. We’re talking 28 countries and in the US/Canada alone you have 60+ jurisdictions all with various employer/contractor law. This is before we start digging into corporate structures where the current voter is employed by Entity A but is the DMR or whole owned subsidy Entity B and the DMR of a partner company where their employer has a minority stake, etc etc.

And how do we flag these? Do we dig into the relationship of every voter to the entity?

I think pragmatically putting restrictions who a member organization can designate could be a large overhead on ARIN.

-p

On Jan 21, 2022, at 7:54 PM, Owen DeLong via ARIN-consult <arin-consult at arin.net<mailto:arin-consult at arin.net>> wrote:

I will disagree strongly here.

I have, at various times, been the Voting DMR (or whatever it was called at the time) for as many as 5 organizations. All were clients at the time. (The total is well over 5, but the max at one time was 5).

Most of the time, most of the clients instructed me as “use your best judgment, you are more familiar with the parties in question.”. Occasionally, a client would ask for a summary of my views on the candidates and then instruct me how they wanted me to vote.

In all cases, I absolutely voted in the best interest of each client (unless voting according to their specific instructions) with their vote. Most of the time this did not require any split voting. On a few occasions, it did.

Even though I’m not currently voting on behalf of any ARIN members other than myself, I would oppose any effort to eliminate the possibility of contractors voting on behalf of their clients if authorized to do so by said client.

Owen

On Jan 10, 2022, at 13:01 , Azinger, Marla <Marla.Azinger at FTR.com<mailto:Marla.Azinger at FTR.com>> wrote:

If ARIN is looking for people that actually want to be involved to cast the voting and really care, the votes would best be cast by anything other than a proxy.

I find proxy voters don’t always care what the desire of the company is and there is no validation being done they casted votes how the owner of the vote would actually want.

I’m not a fan of proxy this day in age.  Proxy to me is a throw back to before online voting occurred. There’s no reason a company cant vote on their own.

Marla Azinger | SPVR, IP Management
O 585-413-9128 | marla.azinger at ftr.com<mailto:marla.azinger at ftr.com>
<image001.png><image002.png> <image003.png> <image004.png> www.frontier.com<http://www.frontier.com/>

From: Adam Thompson <athompson at merlin.mb.ca<mailto:athompson at merlin.mb.ca>>
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2022 12:02 PM
To: Azinger, Marla <Marla.Azinger at FTR.com<mailto:Marla.Azinger at FTR.com>>; andrew.dul at quark.net<mailto:andrew.dul at quark.net>; arin-consult at arin.net<mailto:arin-consult at arin.net>
Subject: RE: [ARIN-consult] Consultation on Implementing Single Transferrable Voting for ARIN Elections

Not sure that’s low-hanging fruit, tbh.  Besides MERLIN, I still have voting rights for … 3? local ISPs, who are all aware of that and OK with that.  In any other arena, that’s just holding a proxy vote, which is not a big deal.
What sort of problems have you seen in this area (that I obviously haven’t)?
-Adam

Adam Thompson
Consultant, Infrastructure Services
<image005.png>
100 - 135 Innovation Drive
Winnipeg, MB, R3T 6A8
(204) 977-6824 or 1-800-430-6404 (MB only)
athompson at merlin.mb.ca<mailto:athompson at merlin.mb.ca>
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From: ARIN-consult <arin-consult-bounces at arin.net<mailto:arin-consult-bounces at arin.net>> On Behalf Of Azinger, Marla
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2022 1:53 PM
To: andrew.dul at quark.net<mailto:andrew.dul at quark.net>; arin-consult at arin.net<mailto:arin-consult at arin.net>
Subject: Re: [ARIN-consult] Consultation on Implementing Single Transferrable Voting for ARIN Elections

All of this is gaming no matter how you slice it.

Silly me. I looked at the title and thought efforts were under way to stop one person from casting votes for companies they don’t actually work for but I didn’t read that in the write up.  I would have thought we’d start there… if anything needs modification…

Marla Azinger | SPVR, IP Management
O 585-413-9128 | marla.azinger at ftr.com<mailto:marla.azinger at ftr.com>
<image006.png><image007.png><image008.png> <image009.png> www.frontier.com<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.frontier.com__;!!M2UytebrhrTR!c2ZEjGLTpLzzB0NcqRhddq0ebLp4mUbzhD5ajlW6BmGWGO6t7IJUsP104CKB559o$>

From: ARIN-consult <arin-consult-bounces at arin.net<mailto:arin-consult-bounces at arin.net>> On Behalf Of Andrew Dul
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2022 11:40 AM
To: arin-consult at arin.net<mailto:arin-consult at arin.net>
Subject: Re: [ARIN-consult] Consultation on Implementing Single Transferrable Voting for ARIN Elections

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Perhaps a simple question, but "how" will the current board insure that future board(s) do not capriciously change the election mechanisms in the future?

Making the changes to the "election process" subject to a majority vote of the membership and having that right inserted into the bylaws might be one method...

Thanks,
Andrew

On 1/7/2022 10:31 AM, Peter Harrison wrote:
Adam,

As stated before, it is the Board's fiduciary responsibility to ensure that a change of this magnitude is equitable and not vulnerable to capricious change. We will act appropriately based on this feedback.

Peter

On Fri, Jan 7, 2022 at 10:03 AM Adam Thompson <athompson at merlin.mb.ca<mailto:athompson at merlin.mb.ca>> wrote:
Peter, I don’t have a problem with STV.  I do have a problem with the board having the latitude – unfettered – to keep changing voting systems without further bylaw amendments.  The type of voting structure, particularly when deviating from the norm that’s baked into Virginia law, should then be baked into the bylaws so that it can’t change in the middle of the night, perhaps even during an election.

Do I trust the current board to not pull stuff like that?  Yeah, probably, I think...  (In fact, can I even name the current board members?  No.  But that’s a different problem.)  Am I willing to blindly trust every future board that might exist?  Absolutely not.  I’ve seen how boards can be co-opted, infiltrated, and/or “turned to the dark side” (so to speak) elsewhere.

As far as the consultation’s goal to determine whether STV is OK or not?  Yes, it is good.  This is an excellent move overall.

-Adam

Adam Thompson
Consultant, Infrastructure Services
<image005.png>
100 - 135 Innovation Drive
Winnipeg, MB, R3T 6A8
(204) 977-6824 or 1-800-430-6404 (MB only)
athompson at merlin.mb.ca<mailto:athompson at merlin.mb.ca>
www.merlin.mb.ca<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.merlin.mb.ca/__;!!M2UytebrhrTR!ZZ9nY7Iqm8q8pZkxsQXDwXKKBYnBxxrhgUQsk72I0lQSknZQozPO16VzGTEuxAE9$>

From: ARIN-consult <arin-consult-bounces at arin.net<mailto:arin-consult-bounces at arin.net>> On Behalf Of Peter Harrison
Sent: Friday, January 7, 2022 11:53 AM
To: arin-consult at arin.net<mailto:arin-consult at arin.net>
Subject: Re: [ARIN-consult] Consultation on Implementing Single Transferrable Voting for ARIN Elections

Dear Community,

With STV there are many ways to re-allocate votes, and new ones may be invented. The videos presented previously illustrated one method.

This link explains some of the options: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting#Comparison_of_ranked_voting_methods<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting*Comparison_of_ranked_voting_methods__;Iw!!M2UytebrhrTR!ZZ9nY7Iqm8q8pZkxsQXDwXKKBYnBxxrhgUQsk72I0lQSknZQozPO16VzGa2rUE66$>

We will need to balance the range of options with those provided by current and future vendors of ARIN’s voting systems. Investigations are being made by staff and they will make recommendations to the board based on their research into our needs, best practices, practicability, relative merit, legal implications and systems availability.

The purpose of the consultation is to get a sense of whether this is a good idea overall. The board will work hard to ensure that we are working in the best interest of the members and the region they serve when evaluating the choices presented.

As John explained, the bylaw modification was made to accommodate multiple forms of voting that may be required in future. The concern that this could lead to opportunistic changes to systems each election cycle is sound. We will investigate ways to ensure this does not happen with possible bylaw wording to meet these and other goals.

The Governance Working Group has worked very closely with both the executive team and staff on this consultation. Their support for a workable solution and concern for the membership has been evident every step of the way. These consultations are the result of over two years of research and were not taken lightly. We will continue to work to maintain this excellent collaboration.

Thank you for your feedback.

Peter

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