Abstract: A method includes generating a first lock requests, each for transmission to a storage unit, where each first lock request indicates a first encoded data slice. First ballots are received, each of the first ballots corresponds to a storage unit, each of the first ballots indicates a first ranking of first requesting entities that includes the DST processing unit. First election result data is generated based on the first ballots. The first election result data indicates a first winner. When the first winner is the DST processing unit, slice access requests are generated in response to the first election result data indicating that the first winner is the DST processing unit, each for transmission to one of the storage units, where each of the slice access requests indicates the first encoded data slice.