Dear Councillors,

 
As it was discussed briefly at the end of our September Council meeting, we need to finalise the process by which the next GNSO Council will vote for its new Chair.
 
The context is very similar to last year’s:
 
1. Philippe Fouquart is the sole candidate for GNSO Chair.
2. The new Council will conduct the vote after the Annual General Meeting transition.
3. Appointment of the GNSO Chair requires 60% support of each house.
4. Historically, votes for Chair have been conducted in-person with paper ballots and votes are anonymous.
5. The Chair position is not contested and we’re not able to meet in person to conduct a paper vote.
6. Similar to last year, there is a range of options from acclamation to a secret email vote. After discussing these options, Pam and I are recommending that the Council conducts a simple roll-call vote as we did last year. This will clearly establish that the minimum threshold had been met to avoid a run-off between the Candidate and “none-of-the-above,” while avoiding the unnecessary complexity of holding an email vote for an uncontested seat.
 
If anyone has concerns about this suggested approach, please let us know before the end of this week.

Warm regards,
Tatiana (and Pam)