Re: [ga] More thoughts on a Registrants Constituency

[Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Roberto Gaetano wrote:
> I have a problem with the fact that most of the time when an organizational
> issue is put on the table, the conversation ends up in counting votes. Am I
> the only one who thinks that with this obsession on voting power we miss
> opportunities to make our voice heard?

Each of us tends to think our own ideas are the right way to go, but as 
fallible people we are often mistaken.

I know you and I know that you are often right on many questions.

I know myself and I know that I am often wrong.  I make a lot of mistakes.

The genius of the democratic ideal is that when a lot of us are making 
informed, enlightened choices, the mistakes will tend to be overwhelmed 
by the combined intelligence of the individual electors.

In the IETF context non-voting consensus tends to work because there are 
technical issues that are subject to technical limits - a wrong idea 
simply won't work.  The existence of pragmatic constraints acts as a 
correction to consensus around a wrong idea (and that has indeed happened.)

But in the internet governance/ICANN arena, we are not dealing with 
technical questions that have objective criteria.  Rather we are dealing 
with soft issues in which no one of us is fully correct.

This need for our combined intelligence is why I am so strongly in favor 
of election systems that admit individual people as electors.

		--karl--