Thread:Excellent set of questions (7)

Wayne,

You suggest regional sub-elections as a way of satisfying COL's preference for at least one Board member from each of Africa, Asia, The West Indies, and the Pacific. Alternatively, we could simply specify that there must be at least one Board member from each of those regions, and that should election results not facilitate that, then the winner whose vote total is the least is skipped over in favor of the qualifying nominee with the most votes. For example, if the only seat held by an African is becoming vacant, and the top three vote getters are not African but the fourth place nominee is, then the first, second, and fourth place nominees could be seated.

A similar system could be used for gender parity. If we say that either gender must have at least a certain number of seats, then should the results of the election not meet those requirements, those who won by the least margin could be skipped over in favour of the nominee of underrepresented gender whose vote total is highest.

One issue would be if those two ideals were in conflict, i.e., if only three seats were being filled it's possible that the possible successors wouldn't be able to meet both the Board's requirement for geographic distribution and for gender parity.

The reason I suggest this as opposed to sub-elections is that the latter suggests that only voters from those regions would be eligible, and that strikes me as something difficult to verify.

You also mention possible representation for Europe (i.e., UK, Malta, and Cyprus) as well as Canada. With nine positions, if four are for CoL areas, and two more are for Canada and the European Commonwealth countries, only three remain. Also, in this case are Australia and New Zealand part of the Pacific group? Are Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei considered Asian or Pacific in this context?

Unless CoL can't be dissuaded, I am not in favour of a blanket requirement for Commonealth citizenship. We now have versions in French, Spanish, and (IIRC) Polish, and it seems disingenuous to encourage participation from people who are then not eligible to take on an oversight role. Besides, any requirement that shuts Erik out makes no sense to me. For similar reasons I'd even support keeping regional guaranteed seats to a minimum, especially on a Board with only nine seats.