Pisanty and Philip Sheppard were aggressively backed by the Business, intellectual property and ISP axis that used to reliably give Marilyn Cade control of almost anything the Council did. But the new balance of power on the GNSO Council, which gives "contracting parties" (registrars and registries) half the votes, upset that equilibrium. Palage received 14 votes; Pisanty only 6; and Sheppard 4. The key swing votes came from two members of the Noncommercial Constituency. With NCUC having been constantly under attack by Pisanty, they were less than charmed about re-electing him. And so, with the blessings of NCUC's favorite-son candidate Barbara Simons, they shifted their votes to Palage on the first round.

But wait. If you lose an election, you can always try to change the rules afterwards. And that's what the formidable Marilyn Cade is trying to do.

Note that Cade's sudden ethical epiphany came only after the results of the Board election were known. Members of Cade's Business Constituency were phoning NCUC representatives seeking their votes as late as 10 pm, March 12. In fact, the NCUC representatives on the Council were elected way back on March 2, and seated in the GNSO on March 4. They were sent Council ballots on March 6. They held those ballots for a week, and had all sent in their votes before any challenge was made. The NCUC election process was over two weeks old and no hint of a challenge was ever made by anyone on the Council until March 13. Odd, isn't it?

Knock out the NCUC and what do you get? 21 votes instead of 24. And Palage still gets the majority of them (12 of 21). This was pointed out by the chair of the GNSO Council, Bruce Tonkin of Melbourne IT. But no, ignore that: no matter what, if the wrong guy wins the election must be invalid.

Cade's proposal? Eliminate the NCUC representatives, conduct the election again without it, and this time give her side more votes by re-weighting the distribution so that the remaining representatives of the user constituencies get half the votes instead of the 42.8% they have without the NCUC. Even if the shifting doesn't give her a majority, a new vote creates plenty of opportunities for arm-twisting, and she wouldn't repeat the tactical error of splitting her votes among two candidates on the first round. She might just have to win over one vote to turn the election.

The title of this piece may cast an unfair aspersion on the state of Florida and the US elections. The problem with the 2000 election was that we really didn't know WHO won; Bush and Gore were in a statistical dead heat. So the process of challenging and reviewing voter qualifications had some legitimate basis. But this election is being challenged even though the outcome was clear and would have been the same even without the disputed votes.

It just goes to show that if the Cade-backed faction doesn't get their way and elect one of their handmaidens, they'd as soon wreck the entire election process as allow Palage's convincing victory to stand. And of course, leaving the charred remains of the NCUC in their wake is just another bonus.