.vote

Status:	Active
Manager:	Monolith Registry LLC
Registry Provider:	Afilias
Type:	Generic
Category:	Lifestyle
More information:

.vote is an active gTLD, added to the DNS root zone in ICANN's new gTLD program. Monolith Registry LLC manages .vote with the support of Afilias as its back-end provider of registry services.

Mission and Purpose

As stated on their application: Currently there is a confused profusion of Internet sites related to elections, referenda, and public and private governance questions involving a vote. Internet users often have to engage in long and often unproductive searches in order to find all the information they are seeking regarding any given vote in which they are interested.

Monolith Registry, LLC envisions the .VOTE TLD to be an easily identifiable Internet space where users seeking information on any given election or question that is put to a vote can easily find information regarding issues, candidates and options. .VOTE will be not be open to the general public, but rather is intended for political candidates, political action committees (PACs), political committees, and other verifiable registrants.

Due to the complexity of accommodating election laws around the world, initially .VOTE will be rolled out only in the U. S. The 85,006 governments in the United States had 513,200 elected officials in 1992, the latest year for which this data is available here. By 2002, the governmental units in the United States had grown to 87,576 , and can be expected to have continued to grow to over 90,000 governmental units with nearly 550,000 elected officials today. Moreover, most elected positions have two or more candidates contesting for the position, pushing the total candidates for all elective offices to well over 1 million. Eventually, as other countries around the world begin to participate, this number is expected to grow exponentially

The .VOTE TLD seeks to make available to each of these candidates a domain by which they can inform the electorate about the issues in question and make their case that they are the candidate of choice for that position. Similarly, governmental organizations on all levels can create domains that cover all the relevant information for elections, referenda, and other matters of decision in their jurisdictions.

This will have the effect of creating an easily recognizable Internet space where end users can go to readily find the information they seek regarding elections and other matters of choice at all levels of government, thereby greatly reducing the current confusion of domains and difficulty of finding desired information.

Building awareness and knowledge of the TLD and the options it affords governments, candidates, and information seekers can be expected to take a couple of major election cycles. Driven by that dynamic, we expect that we will have 20,000 domains under management (DUMs) after three years.

Registration Policy

Eligibility

Registrants must have a bona fide intention to use the domain name, during the current/relevant election cycle, in connection with a clearly identified political/democratic process at the time of registration. Warehousing domain names for future speculative use, or registering a domain name to principally block the bona fide registration and use by a third party is expressly prohibited.

Name Selection

There must be a clear and logical nexus between the activities of the Registrant within the political/democratic system and the domain name being registered. Registrants shall have a bona fide intention to use the domain name in promoting, developing, educating, or engaging in commerce regarding the political system. Domain names that are likely to deceive, disparage or cause a material detriment to the .VOTE brand, its customers or Internet users are explicitly prohibited, e.g., www.ihateCandidateX.vote, www.yourOpponentsName.vote, etc. The default allocation mechanism in connection with Standard Registrations are First-Come, First-Serve as detailed in Section 6.1. However, the Registry Operator reserves the right to utilize alternative allocation mechanisms identified in Section 6.

Proxy/Private Registration

.VOTE requires that accurate Registrant data is available in the WHOIS at all times. Therefore, Proxy / Private Registration is not allowed in .VOTE registrations.

Delegation and Availability

On November 21, 2013 Monolith Registry LLC received a Registry Agreement signed by ICANN for .vote after passing the Initial Evaluation. It was subsequently delegated to the Root Zone of the DNS on 2 March, 2014, completing the successful application for the string. The Sunrise Period was held from January 13, 2015 through February 12, 2015. General Availability opened on February 17, 2015.

Applications

The winning applicant, Monolith Regsitry LLC is a joint venture between Afilias and two Utah-based investors. It is their intent to restrict registration to only verified "governments and office-seekers" within the USA. They suggest to expand eligibility to other countries in the future. The registration price is expected to be $60. The applicant also is the only applicant for .voto, which it expects to charge $100 per registration.

Donuts had also applied for the string but withdrew in June 2013, in what seems to be the first withdrawal related to a private gTLD auction, which was facilitated by Innovative Auctions. The amount of the winning bid was not disclosed. The proposed application succeeded and was delegated to the Root Zone on 2 March 2014.

Registrant Usage

The .vote domain is intended for use in the political sphere, primarily in relation to elections. As stated in the New gTLD Application, the target registrants are governmental organizations, political candidates, political action committees (PACs), political committees, and other verifiable registrants.

State Usage

Currently, eight states have registered .vote domains:

• Alabama
• Arizona
• Connecticut
• Colorado (not live)
• Iowa
• Louisiana
• Rhode Island
• Washington

Seven of these eight states (excluding Colorado) have live sites, where voter information can be found. All of these states have registered .voto domains as well.

Presidential Candidates

Additionally, a few of the political candidates in the 2016 Presidential Primary have adopted .vote. It has been promoted as a way to limit the impact of the cybersquatting that has become common in general elections. Candidates such as Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Carly Fiorina have active sites registered under the .vote domain.