Note that the poll accepts votes for multiple items, and you can change your votes at any time (Edit: not anymore, thanks to this forum being buggy...). Please only vote if you meet the criteria for the options! Feel free to ask any questions in the thread...
After much discussion, I am leaning toward this two-part plan (or something like it)...
1. Setup new Eligius-Hu pool
This will have the PPLNS×8 reward system: when a block is found, its reward is divided equally* across the last times 8 shares. The number of shares has been chosen to be times 8 so that there is a 99.9% chance of any given share being paid; on average, each share will be paid 8 times.
That means that at the current difficulty 2,190,865, a block found today would reward 0.0000028527545056404662 BTC for each of the 17,526,920 shares preceding it, regardless of what "round" those shares were found in. After 8 blocks, assuming they are all within those 17,526,920 shares since the share was submitted, that share will have been paid a total of 0.00002282203604512373 BTC (equivalent to 100% PPS). If the pool gets lucky or unlucky, we might find more or less blocks within that window, all of which the share is paid for. This does potentially increase variance a bit, but an 8 block window should be enough to minimize it.
This summary is slightly inaccurate, as the shares will be of dynamic difficulty depending on your hashrate, and the value of each share will depend on your share-difficulty and the current block difficulty at the time the share is submitted, to avoid being hoppable during difficulty changes, and gracefully scale to ASICs as they are available.
There will also be a few under-the-hood changes to handle ASICs on Eligius-Hu: (new) BIP22 mining protocol support, and elimination of the permanent eternally-growing share database. The elimination of this database means the current Artefact2 stats will not work with this new pool unless someone steps up to update it. wizkid057 plans to write an updated stats interface.
You can express your support for this new pool only if you plan to use it by voting for the first poll option ("new Eligius-Hu"). If you are a current Eligius-Ra miner, and plan to leave the pool because you don't like Eligius-Hu, vote "dislike Hu" (option 5).
The default pool for the mining.eligius.st hostname will be changed to Eligius-Hu about a week after it goes live (miners can specify an explicit pool to use with the ra.mining.eligius.st or hu.mining.eligius.st hostnames). If you plan to mine on either Eligius-Ra or Hu at that time, and think the default should be changed immediately upon its availability, vote "Hu default" (option 2). If you explicitly think waiting a week more is a good idea, you can vote "Extra week at Ra" (option 6). Regardless of these votes, hu.mining.eligius.st is currently functional as a redirect to Ra, and will switch to Hu immediately when it comes online.
2. Gradual shutdown of Eligius-Ra pool
Since PPLNS×8 does not allow for carryover of existing Extra Credit (EC), Eligius-Ra will continue to operate until the block subsidy halves to 25 BTC (I would need to rewrite the pool software to make it survive the 25 BTC drop). Because of the near Miners who have a lot invested in EC may wish to continue to mine Eligius-Ra until it has been paid to their satisfaction.
Due to the extreme improbability of Eligius-Ra catching up to 100% PPS in this timeframe, it is proposed that it be changed to "SMPPSAM" (ie, an Active Miners variant) until it closes: this would mean inactive miners on Ra would not receive EC until/unless all the active miners are paid an amount equal to their current earnings first. Miners who have EC on Eligius-Ra or plan to be mining on it at that time may vote to support (option 3) or oppose (option 4) the Active Miners rule.
Edit: Note that with the Active Miners rule enabled, ex-miners who have unpaid balances under 0.67 BTC will finally reach the 1 week inactivity and get their payout. Also note that when Eligius-Ra finally closes, all unpaid balances (not EC!) will be paid out regardless of the amount.
Please note that Eligius-Ra may not be updated to handle ASIC load!
Poll option G is for future use should someone propose any other changes: do not vote on it until it is defined. If you have any possibly better ideas, please do bring them up!