Hello all, I would like to suggest conducting a poll of NARALO members on the best way to deal with the tie for Secretariat resulting from the recently-held vote. While we need to revise our regulations regarding tie-breaking, we have an immediate need to resolve the current situation before the next ICANN meeting. Based on discussions I have heard to date, there are three paths to resolving this that have received some interest: 1. Random tie-break The votes for ALSs and unaffiliated members is re-held, and the rules are modified. If another tie results, the tie is broken by a random method, supervised by at least two non-candidate members and/or At-Large staff. 2. Tie-break by NA-Region ALAC members The votes for ALSs and unaffiliated members is re-held and he rules are modified. If another tie results, the tie is broken by a consensus achieved in private by the three ALAC members for North America (Alan, Eduardo and myself). Since there are three of us, no deadlock is allowed there 3. Shared Secretariat No new election is held, and NARALO declares both Darlene and Glenn as co-Secretariats. While there is no precedent for this in NARALO, there is elsewhere in ICANN At-Large (both co-Chair and co-Secretariats have been done in other regions). The two would alternate travel to ICANN meetings (though both would naturally be at the Summit in London). In the case that any of the North American At-Large leadership cannot attend a meeting (Chair, travel-designated secretariat or ALAC member), the "non-travelling" secretariat member would automatically be designated to take that travel allocation. The rules may still be modified in case of future ties, but such action is not required immediately. So I am proposing that, in advance of the next NARALO call, we could do an informal poll of members (by Bigpulse or Doodle) to gain a sense of preferences between these options that may help guide a regional consensus on the August call. Is this a workable plan? Are the options above a valid representation of the ones discussed? (There are some other tie-break methods I have eliminated because of lack of support to date). I admit that when I started thinking about the tie I had not given any thought to the shared secretariat idea, but it has grown on me since. There is a significant amount of work to do, and it would be IMO a shame to force an all-or-nothing tiebreak on two people with both popular support and an eagerness to do the job. - Evan