Up to 41 rounds

We’re up to 41 rounds, and the AP report and others on the voting don’t mention how in the last round, both the Dominican Republic and Chile received votes (from themselves?). It looks like no voting is scheduled for today.

According to Ecuador’s UN Ambassador (who chairs the Latin America and Caribbean group):

He held talks with the Guatemalan and Venezuelan ambassadors "in a very good atmosphere," and he said negotiations will continue Thursday with the foreign ministers of both countries.

"My expectation is that we are going to have - perhaps not tomorrow because these are very difficult things - but that we are going to have an agreement," Cordovez said.

I think John Bolton is loving this. Venezuela won’t get the seat, Guatemala has already said it won’t accept Bolivia, which is Chávez’s second choice, and UN ambassadors (including Latin Americans) are getting annoyed at all the time this is taking. Since Venezuela has the fewest votes yet refuses to back down, it will get most of the blame for every day that a solution is not reached.

One solution that hasn’t been mentioned is to allow each country to take the seat for a year. Apparently that happened in 1960, when Poland and Turkey deadlocked for 52 rounds before reaching that compromise. At 41 rounds, this is now the third longest in UN history.