Summary

  • The ASO's own account of the 2026 vacancy states that Seat 9 opened after Alan Barrett's passing and that the appointee serves the remainder of that term, through the conclusion of the ICANN90 Annual General Meeting on 4 November 2027.
  • The same page, as reported by the retrieval provider, describes a selection run on internal Address Council nominations, interviews and electronic voting, without a public call for nominations — followed twenty-one days later by a published call for nominations to Seat 9.
  • The Council is required by GPDP step 6 to undertake measures under an adopted procedure to assure itself that significant viewpoints were heard; the Board selection procedures it says it follows were named in this review, not obtained.

Start with what the Address Supporting Organization says about itself. It describes the ASO as one of ICANN's three Supporting Organizations, reviews and develops recommendations on IP address policy, and advises the ICANN Board on the operation, assignment and management of IP addresses (ASO homepage). Among its three numbered responsibilities, the second is defining procedures for the selection of individuals to serve on ICANN bodies. Selection is not an administrative afterthought bolted onto the policy work. It is written into the job description.

The elections page sets out the arrangement: as outlined in the ASO MoU and ICANN Bylaws, the Address Council is responsible for appointing individuals to Seats 9 and 10, directors serve three years, and the Council follows the ASO AC ICANN Board Selection Procedures (ASO Board elections). One adopted procedure, two seats, three-year terms.

Then a director dies, and the arrangement meets a case it had to answer quickly. The ASO's page on the 2026 vacancy states the position plainly: "Following the passing of Alan Barrett, a vacancy arose in Seat 9 of the ICANN Board of Directors. In accordance with the ICANN Bylaws, the Address Supporting Organization Address Council (ASO AC) was responsible for selecting and nominating an individual to fill the vacancy. The selected individual will serve for the remainder of the term previously held by Mr. Barrett, through the conclusion of the ICANN90 Annual General Meeting on 4 November 2027" (2026 extraordinary selection).

That paragraph does real work. It identifies the trigger, names the responsible body, and fixes the end date of the appointment at 4 November 2027. A reader now knows what was bought and for how long: the tail of another person's term, not a fresh three years.

What the record does not do is explain the choice. The retrieval provider's report of the same page describes the 2026 selection as involving internal nominations by Address Council members, interviews and electronic voting, and states that the process did not include a public call for nominations. That is a report of the page, not text obtained from it verbatim, and it should be read as such. It is also entirely defensible on its own terms: after a director's death, an expedited internal process is a reasonable instrument, and a public call is slow by design.

The homepage then supplies the notice that turns a defensible process into a question. Its news list carries two dated lines: "15 September 2026 ASO AC Calls for Nominations for Seat 9 on the ICANN Board of Directors" and "25 August 2026 ASO AC Selects Oscar Robles to Fill ICANN Board Seat 9 Vacancy" (ASO homepage).

The same call appears on RIPE NCC's news page that day, filed under an NRO community update label (RIPE NCC).

Twenty-one days. A seat filled in August, an invitation to nominate for the same seat number in September. And the obtained record does not state which term the September call concerns. That silence is not a small clerical gap; it splits the story into two very different readings. If the September call concerns the remainder of Barrett's term through November 2027, then the Council invited nominations to a seat it had filled three weeks earlier, and the invitation needs an explanation of what happens to the person already sitting there.

If it concerns the following three-year term, then the vacancy language on the homepage and the vacancy appointment are answering different questions under one number, and a reader scanning the news list cannot tell which is which.

Nothing in the material obtained resolves that. It is worth saying precisely what is missing, because the missing thing is small and specific: a sentence naming the term, and a sentence saying what the August appointment does to the September call.

Now set the Council's own conduct of its seat beside the standard it applies to everyone else's policy work. GPDP step 6 provides that the Address Council shall review the process followed by the RIRs in reaching a position of common agreement and a common text, and shall undertake measures in accordance with an adopted procedure to assure itself that the significant viewpoints of interested parties were adequately considered (Global Policy Development Process).

Read the verbs. Review the process followed. Undertake measures. Under an adopted procedure. Assure itself. The Council does not accept a registry's assurance that consultation happened; it satisfies itself, by a procedure it has adopted in advance, that the significant viewpoints were heard. Step 1 of the same process is equally open-handed, allowing a proposed global policy to be submitted either to an RIR policy forum by mailing list or public meeting, or directly to the Address Council (Global Policy Development Process).

Against that, the seat. The adopted procedure governing Board selections is named on the elections page and was not obtained in this review, so nothing here describes its nomination requirements, its voting rule or its timetable. No Council minute or reasoned statement explaining the 25 August selection or the 15 September call was obtained either. What was obtained is a name, a date, a term end, and a provider's account of the mechanics.

The asymmetry is not hypocrisy, and it is not a scandal. It is a documentation gap in a body whose core competence is documentation. An expedited vacancy process can be legitimate and still owe the public two paragraphs: the procedure under which it ran, and the reason this person. The Council asks the registries for exactly that kind of assurance, under an adopted procedure, before it accepts their claim that the right voices were heard.

The fix is cheap and does not require anyone's permission. Publish the ASO AC ICANN Board Selection Procedures as a live page rather than a cited title. Add a per-vacancy record with three fields: the date of the decision, the term it runs to, and one paragraph of reasons. And name the term in every nomination call, so a news list can be read without a footnote.

None of that changes a vote already cast or shortens a term already running. It changes what the next reader can verify. A body that audits the registries' process should be able to show the same courtesy to its own seat — and the courtesy is not discretion. It is the assurance step, applied inward.