As I mentioned recently Nominet is holding elections and has announced the candidates that will be on the ballot.
I also mentioned that there was a certain degree of controversy surrounding one of the nominees not appearing on the list of candidates.
Over the past few days a couple of Nominet members have been questioning the process that was followed that led to the decision to exclude Jim Davies from the ballot. However as Mr Davies is not a Nominet member he did not have access to the member forum where the discussion was going on. Nominet issued a more detailed explanation to members about how the process was followed and also stated that the Nominet Board was unanimous in its decision to exclude one nominee.
In the Board’s most recent minutes there’s the entry:
the Board received an update on the 2023 NED elections with a status report on the screening results for each of the candidates. Noting the need for the elections process to be fair and the same rules must apply to every nominee, the Board unanimously decided that a candidate who had not adhered to the stated deadlines would not be included on the ballot
this year
However Mr Davies has now made a public statement on the situation as well as laying out what he plans to do about it. The statement includes a fairly detailed timeline of his interactions with the company that was doing the candidate screening, Reed, as well as his interactions with Nominet staff. Davies is adamant that he followed the procedures correctly and that he did not miss any deadlines.
So what now?
Basically he’s going legal and is threatening to take Nominet to court to get himself onto the ballot.
Davies was on Nominet’s Board in the past though he resigned and the relationship between him and Nominet doesn’t appear to have been very amicable.
I’ve no idea how a UK court will view any of this, so I’ve no idea if the elections will be delayed or not.
Less drama around Nominet would be nice though!
