Summary

  • LACNIC re-elected Sergio Rojas as a policy-development co-chair in 2026. He received 51 of 115 votes against three other candidates, after a 2024 re-election in which he was the only valid candidate and no ballot took place.
  • The elected chair moderates policy discussion and tests unresolved technical objections. LACNIC's PDP rules assign final policy ratification to the Board, making the 51-vote win the beginning of a constrained job rather than a mandate to settle every argument by arithmetic.

The ballot returned to the room

In 2024, LACNIC announced that Sergio Rojas would serve another two years as a co-chair of its Policy Development Process. He was the sole valid candidate, so the election body did not run a vote. In April 2026, the ballot was crowded enough to need a table. Rojas received 51 votes, Celsa Sánchez 33, Marcela Alejandra Orbiscay 23 and Oscar Danilo González Navarrete eight. All 115 voters had chosen one of the four. Rojas had the largest total, short of an absolute majority, and LACNIC's final notice confirmed his new two-year term after the Public Policy Forum.

The difference between those two elections says something useful without pretending to read voters' minds. An unopposed return gave the room no contest to settle. The four-way race gave it a count, competitors and an audit window before the official announcement. It made the selection visible. It did not make the next policy meeting easy.

LACNIC's PDP rules give the two chairs equal functions. They prepare and lead forum discussions, moderate the public policy list, work with authors on proposed text and evaluate whether consensus has formed. Consensus is defined through discussion and the resolution of critical technical objections. A tally of yeses, noes and abstentions does not decide it. The chair who just won a ballot must now listen especially carefully to people who did not vote for him, did not vote at all or object for reasons a ballot cannot summarize.

The rulebook puts clocks on that work. After a discussion period closes, chairs have up to two weeks to announce whether consensus was reached. A proposal that clears that stage enters a four-week last call. The chairs then check whether consensus holds before sending it to LACNIC's Board for ratification. They can steer a discussion, name an objection and explain a conclusion. The Board makes the final ratification decision. Rojas received a microphone with a timetable and a review path, not a magic stamp.

His background helps explain why people know the name. A LACNIC biography records that Rojas led the registry's Registration Services area from 2009 to 2020, managing Internet number resources. The 2026 result reports the vote, not a biography-based entitlement to agree or disagree with him. The public test of this term will be what happens when a technically serious objection stands in the path of an attractive proposal.