A spatio-temporal random voting scheme is provided that incorporates location distribution, spatial randomness, and temporal randomness in the collection of information from a plurality of sensing devices within the cognitive network. The region is divided into a plurality of sectors, where each sector is a portion of the region. A subset of sectors is selected from the plurality of sectors in the region to provide spatial randomness. A device is randomly selected from each sector in the subset of sectors to provide additional spatial randomness to the information collection process. Temporal randomness may be introduced by randomly selecting a timeslot within a sensing window period in which devices are to scan a frequency spectrum band to determine if a signal energy above a threshold is detected. Sensing reports are then collected from the selected sensing devices and used to determine whether the frequency spectrum band is available or in use.