[arin-discuss] No quorum in last election

[Dean Anderson]

On Fri, 1 Feb 2008, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:

> >Where did you get this list of people?
> 
> The Tooth Fairy visited me and told me that 990 of the names are fraudulent
> paper companies installed by the Taliban.  

Ah. I wouldn't have guessed this in a million years. The "Tooth Fairy"  
isn't a credible source.

> >Merely being in bankruptcy or having ceased network operations doesn't
> >terminate membership.
> 
> No, but bankruptcy laws require that the organization in bankruptcy
> supply the contact name of someone who can bring the business to an
> orderly closure.  

Given your above source, I hesitate to respond further.  But I've been
meaning to propose changes to the NPRM on bankruptcy, and it is clear
that many people seem to misunderstand bankruptcy. Bankruptcy doesn't
necessarilly lead to closure, orderly or otherwise. Bankruptcy is a
legal procedure where creditors are _prevented_ from seizing assets and
thereby shutting down or interrupting the business until a court
approves.  Creditors can also seek to impose bankruptcy to obtain court
supervision.  

The outcome of various chapters of bankruptcy depends on the chapter of
law and lots of other factors, and can be credit reorganization, partial
liquidation, complete liquidation, etc.  A business in bankruptcy still
exists as a legal entity, and can still exercise its membership rights
in ARIN. A business cannot cease to exist until _after_ it has exited
bankruptcy, since it is under court supervision.  So your premise is
entirely faulty.

> >> Suggestions to make changes to the bylaws are not appropriate at this
> >> time.  Bylaw changes require an existing board, and since the
> >> legitimacy of the existing board is at question, it cannot make bylaw
> >> changes.
> >
> >Bylaw changes do not require a Board under the Virginia statute. The
> >membership can vote bylaws in directly.
> 
> Except as you have already pointed out not enough members are voting to make
> any vote valid.  Thus that isn't an option.

Err, wrong again. In the last election, not enough members _voted_ (past
tense) to constitute a quorum.  A new vote can be held with appropriate
notice, per the law. If a quorum exists, the vote is valid.


> And nothing in the current rules prevents the Board from purging nonexistent
> or non-contactable, or fraudulent members from the roles.

That is essentially correct (well, the staff rather than the board, but
that is a quibble).  Disenfranchisement is, umm, a detailed-oriented
task. They have to entirely truthful, and they have to make diligent
efforts to contact the members, etc. But it is true that it can be done
at anytime.

> You know, the ironic thing here is that some months ago during the
> IPv4<->IPv6 debates, I suggested that ARIN start proceedings to review
> the IPv4 assignments it had made to see if they were still in use -
> and pull back the unused ones. I got shouted down because people waxed
> eloquent about how the small number of IPv4 recoverable through
> reclamation efforts wouldn't be worth the effort.
> 
> How, you have come along and with one fell swoop you've now forced the
> issue. ARIN will have no choice now but to purge the roles and start
> reclaiming abandonded IPv4 - which is what I wanted all along.  
> Thanks, Dean! :-)

You seem to be confusing WHOIS contacts with the membership list.

The evaluation of IPV4 address space usage by legacies, and the WHOIS
contacts of legacies has no bearing on the current composition of the
membership list. Most of the IPV4 Legacy's aren't ARIN members, and
aren't listed in the 2945 members in the member list, even if they have
WHOIS entries.

Those listed in the membership list are members because they either
joined or got direct allocations from ARIN; they are members.  The
composition of the membership list has no relation to the IPV4 legacy
issues previously discussed.

		--Dean


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