An election protocol or method is described for use in Internet Telephony, in which a gatekeeper is elected to serve as an active gatekeeper. The group of gatekeepers elect one gatekeeper in a zone to act as a primary gatekeeper that responds to gatekeeper request messages by broadcasting active gatekeeper claim messages that contain a unique gatekeeper priority value for the gatekeeper. The gatekeepers compare the received gatekeeper priority value with their own gatekeeper priority value and either broadcast another active gatekeeper claim message (if they are higher ranked) or do not broadcast another active gatekeeper claim message (if they are lower ranked). This process sorts the gatekeepers into a hierarchy with the highest ranked gatekeeper designated to respond to gatekeeper request messages. The other gatekeepers stand by in an idle mode and do not respond to gatekeeper requests. The other gatekeepers are ranked in priority in accordance with a gatekeeper priority value assigned to each gatekeeper. If the primary gatekeeper should go down (for example, due to either a graceful shutdown by a system administrator or due to a machine failure), a new gatekeeper is promoted to act as the primary gatekeeper based on the ranking of the gatekeepers, or the remaining gatekeepers can go through the iterative election process again.