It’s that time of the year again… Nominet’s Board elections.
This year there is one seat up for grabs.
The nomination period for the election finished up some time ago but it’s only today that Nominet has announced who the candidates are:
- Thomas Rickert
- David Thornton
- Steve Wright
Of course as it’s Nominet related there has to be a slight “twist”…
In the email announcing the candidates they say that there were originally five people in the running for the Board this year. So what happened to the other two?
One nominee withdrew, which I think is Phil Buckingham, who stepped down from the Nominet Board recently.
The second nominee, which we know is Jim Davies, apparently did not pass the candidate screening according to the announcement email:
One candidate did not provide the required information for security screening by the deadline set out in the candidate pack and is therefore not included on the ballot this year. As Nominet is entrusted with managing critical internet infrastructure, these checks are important and all directors who join the company are asked to complete them. The screening process itself is straightforward and every effort is made to help potential directors through the process. This situation is unfortunate but the Board was unanimous in deciding that in order for the election process to be fair, the same rules must apply to every nominee.
So according to Nominet the person nominated did not complete some step or part of the screening and then the Board enforced the rules, thus disqualifying the nominee, however this version of events is being disputed by some:
There has been some fairly lively discussion of the nomination process and the current situation on the private Nominet member forum.
While a more naive and optimistic version of myself would say that this is just a minor distraction the current, more jaded version of me suspects that this has the potential to overshadow the entire election process unless Nominet deals with it very decisively and transparently.
I don’t know the players. If a screening is required and there is a process it should be followed by all involved unless there was some error in the process that is not the candidates fault. Or is the concern a screening is not fair.