<nettime> ICANN outsources MAL election

[t byfield <tbyfield@panix.com>]

<www.tbtf.com/roving_reporter/>

     Fri Sep 22 13:25:42 EDT 2000 
     
     ICANN forgets to announce that it outsourced the MAL election 
     
     On the morning of Thursday 21 September, election.com, sort of
     announced[1] that ICANN chose the company to "conduct ICANN's first
     worldwide online vote" -- the Membership At Large election,
     scheduled to take place 1-10 October. Curiously, a day and a half
     later ICANN still hasn't gotten around to announcing anything of
     the sort. Is this an oversight? Yet another instance of a staff
     straining under the burdens of B2B "technical oversight"? We
     shall see: if ICANN makes a Friday-afternoon announcement, savvy
     observers may well wonder why ICANN would want to play down such
     a historic development by inserting it into the media cycle just
     as it troughs for the weekend. 
     
     Among the "long list of satisfied customers" election.com cites
     in its non-press non-release is the Arizona Democratic Party.
     However, that arrangement didn't meet with uniform glee: the
     Voting Integrity Project[3] filed suit over the contract, driven by
     a concerns that the reckless dotcomification of elections brought
     up grave questions about equality of access in the context of a
     public election. See this short summary of events and links in
     the RISKS Digest.) The VIP's specific concerns don't seem to
     apply to the MAL election, because the MAL electorate, almost by
     definition, consists of people with internet access. 

     [1] <http://www.election.com/us/pressroom/pr2000/0921.htm>
     [2] <http://www.icann.org/>
     [3] <http://www.voting-integrity.org/>
     [4] <http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/20.83.html#subj6>
     [5] <http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/>


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