RE: [council] Council elections-- Response from the General Counsel's Office

[Margie Milam <Margie.Milam@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear All,

Please find below the response from the General Counsel's Office pertaining to 
the questions related to the Council's elections that were posted to the 
Council email list earlier today.

All the Best,

Margie
_________

Margie Milam
Senior Policy Counselor
ICANN
_________

Hi Margie -

Based on Article X, Section 3.8 of the Bylaws, The NCA appointed to CPH appears 
to be considered a member of the CPH.  ("a. the Contracted Parties House 
includes the Registries Stakeholder Group (three members), the Registrars 
Stakeholder Group (three members), and one voting member appointed by the ICANN 
Nominating Committee for a total of seven voting members").


As I read the ops procedures for the GNSO, the Chair will only be non-voting if 
the Chair is selected from outside of the houses.  Essentially, the only person 
who could be on the GNSO Council and outside of the houses is the non-voting 
NCA.

Because the NCA to the CPH is a member of a house, that means that if he is 
elected as Chair, he will not have to give up any voting rights, and no further 
analysis is needed on whether it is then proper to invoke any of the vacancy 
provisions within the ops procedures.

On the issue of whether the NCA to the CPH may vote in the election for which 
he is being considered as Chair, I don't see anything in the Bylaws or the ops 
procedure that preclude any of the candidates from voting for themselves.  Each 
individual candidate may wish to consider if any abstention provision would be 
applicable to that vote, but there does not appear to be a blanket rule.  In 
the event that the NCA to the CPH wishes to abstain from the Chair election in 
which he is a candidate, there does not appear to be an allowance for the NCA 
to select a proxy in that limited situation. Candidates who are not NCAs 
probably have the proxy process available to them if they wish to abstain from 
a vote in which they are a candidate.  This last paragraph should not be read 
to consider that it is required for candidates to abstain in this situation - 
this is likely a personal decision, or the Council may have broader views on 
this topic.

Best,

Sam