A
Aaron Clifford
While checking the voting rights calculations this year ahead of the director elections and AGM, we identified an error that distorted the allocation of votes in 2018 and 2019, leading to an uplift of the votes for those taking part.
The error had its origin in the treatment of multiple part-payments for domains. As a result of a coding change in April 2017, members making multiple part payments received a higher voting allocation than was appropriate in 2018 and 2019. This was corrected before the 2020 voting rights were published.
We have assessed whether the uplift could have had an impact on the outcome of elections or resolutions in 2018 and 2019. This was not the case as they were not of sufficient scale to affect the results and the large registrars’ votes are subject to a 3% cap.
For the election in 2019, the election scrutineer was able to remodel the election using recalculated voting rights information. Their analysis supports our conclusion that the voting rights error did not affect the outcome.
It is regrettable that these errors arose. Nominet has a highly complex membership voting system which was designed to ensure proper representation of smaller registrars as well as the larger organisations. We have now changed the method of dealing with part payments in voting rights calculations and have a number of additional checks in place to avoid any future repetition.
Our Chair Mark Wood wishes to reassure members that the Board has been thoroughly briefed on the voting allocation issue and is confident that the impact in 2018 and 2019 was not material. The Board is also satisfied that the anomalies have been rectified and that voting allocations for 2020 are correct.
The error had its origin in the treatment of multiple part-payments for domains. As a result of a coding change in April 2017, members making multiple part payments received a higher voting allocation than was appropriate in 2018 and 2019. This was corrected before the 2020 voting rights were published.
We have assessed whether the uplift could have had an impact on the outcome of elections or resolutions in 2018 and 2019. This was not the case as they were not of sufficient scale to affect the results and the large registrars’ votes are subject to a 3% cap.
For the election in 2019, the election scrutineer was able to remodel the election using recalculated voting rights information. Their analysis supports our conclusion that the voting rights error did not affect the outcome.
It is regrettable that these errors arose. Nominet has a highly complex membership voting system which was designed to ensure proper representation of smaller registrars as well as the larger organisations. We have now changed the method of dealing with part payments in voting rights calculations and have a number of additional checks in place to avoid any future repetition.
Our Chair Mark Wood wishes to reassure members that the Board has been thoroughly briefed on the voting allocation issue and is confident that the impact in 2018 and 2019 was not material. The Board is also satisfied that the anomalies have been rectified and that voting allocations for 2020 are correct.
