Nominet board vote passes off without cockups

The election that really matters

By Chris Williams • Get more from this author

Posted in Networks, 4th May 2007 13:18 GMT

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Nominet, the top level registrar for .uk addresses, which administers the system for dealing with disputes over domains, has elected two new non-executive directors to its influential board.

At the not-for-profit's AGM in Manchester this week, Sebastian Lahtinen, who founded adslguide.org.uk (now thinkbroadband.com), and Angus Hanton, who runs a domain registrar, were granted the jobs.

Hanton was involved in the controversy over the 2006 election, which saw him and another losing candidate make calls for a re-run after Popularis, a polling firm which ran the vote for Nominet, messed up its calculations.

He stood on a platform of a more active push to use .uk domains, which is meant to be a key part of Nominet's mission. Lahtinen floated the idea of a member involvement officer to operate a "converstaion" with members and touted his independence from stakeholder interests.

At just nine per cent, turnout was typically weedy, although probably not much worse than yesterday's local elections. Under Nominet's convoluted election procedures, 265 member organisations cast a total of 835,000 votes, compared to 455,000 last year, thanks to the number of domains bought in the last 12 months.

Lahtinen and Hanton will replace incumbents Alex Bligh and Jonathan Robinson, who have sat on the board for the last four and 11 years respectively. ®

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