[arin-ppml] Board Election Petition underway

[John Curran]

On 13 Oct 2021, at 1:25 PM, Jason Baugher <jasonbaugher at adamstel.com<mailto:jasonbaugher at adamstel.com>> wrote:

John, I won’t attempt to speak for Owen, but rather would address the suggestion of Board involvement in the process.

As an outsider to the process, I understand that the Board chooses from it’s own ranks 2 members of the NomCom, who then solicit volunteers and select to add them to the NomCom. Then the NomCom chooses candidates with no oversight or transparency to it’s decision-making process. Finally, we as members get to vote from the chosen candidates.

The above summarization is roughly correct, noting the NomCom more often than not isn’t “choosing candidates” but actively try to recruiting people to serve (as there is often a dearth of volunteers…)

Does the Board itself participate in the candidate review?

Neither the Board nor the ARIN AC is involved in candidate review.

As an entity, I’m sure it doesn’t. However, the Board is choosing the trustees for the NomCom, and the NomCom is choosing the volunteers. The 2 Trustees aren’t going to solicit a contrarian voice to be on the NomCom, and by extension the NomCom isn’t going to accept a candidate from the same bent.

I am unsure what you mean by "The 2 Trustees aren’t going to solicit a contrarian voice to be on the NomCom” - note that the NomCom participants are selected from among volunteers at the very start of the process and before nominees are ever solicited.   In recent years (including this year) the pool of NomCom volunteers hasn’t even been sufficient to seat the NomCom, and we’ve had to reopen the call <https://www.arin.net/announcements/20210513_nomcom/> so the amount actual “selecting” that the two trustee NomCom members have been doing is quite nominal.

(Indeed - it would have been great if all this interest in ARIN governance actually materialized back when we seeking people to serve on the NomCom, yes?)

Observe that there are two Board Members and up to two ARIN AC members on the NomCom in order to give the NomCom some insight into the two bodies for which it is doing election slate development.  All of the NomCom participants serve in their individual capacity and are neither representatives or liaisons back to the respective Board or AC bodies as the NomCom deliberations are strictly confidential to the NomCom.

The only way someone can break the cycle is by a successful petition and getting enough votes, which is inherently unfair because those chosen by the NomCom have no such petition requirement.

The petition process serves as an escape valve of sorts; regardless of the machinations of the nomination process, it provides an alternative path to be added to the election slate.

You can hardly blame us for questioning this arrangement, regardless of how benign the decisions being made behind closed doors may actually be, because the process itself implies otherwise. Some fairly simple changes could be made that would clear up the doubt, and hopefully those will be considered before the next election cycle. If they are not, and the process remains the same, I suspect we’ll be rehashing this same discussion.

To that end, I would strongly advise that immediately after this election completes you submit whatever suggestions you have for improvement of ARIN's elections to the ARIN suggestion and consultation process <https://www.arin.net/participate/community/acsp/process/> so that they get formal consideration.

Thanks!
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers




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