Re: [ga] European At Large meeting announcement (today)

[Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@xxxxxx>]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 11:52:44AM -0800,
 Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote 
 a message of 91 lines which said:

> It is worth mentioning, that we are not asking for a totally direct
> system, in which people vote on every issue, but rather a
> representative system,

I understood that. I mentioned the specific issue of "DNS wildcards in
.com", not to imply that users should vote directly (like they do in
some parts of Switzerland) but to give an idea of the issues that can
be faced by users' representatives.

> > 1) Defining the electing body. Should every human on earth vote,
> 
> Some have said "every person who has registered a domain name."  

Of course, no, because it is an arbitrary restriction on the users. It
also introduces a strong bias in favor of the corporate world.

But is has one big advantage: the electing body is known and can be
authentified.

> Certainly technical knowledge ought not to be a prerequisite 

Of course. Parliament members do not need to be registered accountants
to vote the budget of the State.

> > 2) Ensuring a free election campaign, giving that many Internet users
> > are in countries without free speech.
> 
> Do we abandon democracy because it can't be universal? 

Nice statement. But, in practice, it means some countries (those with
free speech) will be overrepresented.

> > 3) Ensuring only one vote per user, giving that some human beings do
> > not yet have a PGP key or a X509 certificate.
> 
> Registration is indeed a problem.  

It is a problem even in elections without immediate and serious
consequences (like on Usenet). Imagine if the users' elected
representatives were the real source of power! Too much incentive for
cheaters.

> > 4) Combining the secrecy of voting (unless you plan to drop it, which
> > may be an option) with the ability to check the tallying (and not in
> > the Florida way).
> 
> I'm not sure of your point here 

You have several ways to attack an election: the fraud can be
organized by some of the voters (hence the transparent boxes or, on
the Internet, the PKI) or it can be organized by the body in charge of
the elections (hence the public opening and tallying of the
votes). Imagine that ICANN announces that Mr. X was elected with xxx
voices. How do you check that?