Hybrid Voting at World Sailing's General Assembly: AGM Elections

How secure e-voting solutions powered World Sailing's flawless hybrid AGM with 150 global delegates.

• instant results
• full independence
• zero failures
  

Chapter

1. (TL;DR) Short and sweet summary
2. World Sailing's Challenge: Hybrid AGM Voting at Scale
3. How Do I Choose a Secure Interactive Voting Solution for AGMs?
4. What is the Best Annual General Meeting Software for Secure Voting?
5. AGM Election Security Solutions: What World Sailing Did Right
6. The Setup: Preparing for Vice Presidential Elections
7. Election Day: Seamless Hybrid Voting
8. Key Features That Made the Difference
9. Challenges & Multi-Layer Fallback Solutions
10. Lumi Global vs NemoVote: What World Sailing Chose
11. Results & Feedback: A Vote of Confidence
12. Lessons Learned: Best Practices for Hybrid AGM Voting
13. FAQ: Hybrid Voting for Sports Organizations
14. Conclusion

Short and sweet

World Sailing's 2025 General Assembly in Dublin proved hybrid voting works flawlessly for international sports federations. Nearly 150 delegates from 140+ nations voted on critical governance decisions and elected new Vice Presidents using NemoVote's secure hybrid voting platform.

Key results: 2-minute votes, instant results, full Electoral Board independence, zero technical failures. From QR code access to 5-layer fallbacks, here's how sports clubs can achieve the same success.

1 NemoVotes help desk was setup one day ahead and early for the voting day. Making sure that all voters with questions are able to participate and feel confident to cast their ballot.

2 Marco Hämmerle (CTO) helped voters to get access, confirmed count test votes and answered questions.

3 World Sailing and NemoVote worked closely together: Before voters where able to approach the NemoVote Team, Nelia Smith and her team made sure that they are eligible to vote.

4 (Left to right) Aaron Lesicar (COO), Marco Hämmerle (CTO) displaying the booth. Signs and Banners made sure, everyone knew where to visit the help desk.

World Sailing's Challenge: Hybrid AGM Voting at Scale

World Sailing coordinates 140+ national sailing federations across every continent. Their Annual Conference demands flawless hybrid voting for delegates who travel from Japan to Brazil to Ireland.

November 2025 in Dún Laoghaire (Dublin): 100 delegates on-site, 50 remote. Mission-critical: Elect 2 new Vice Presidents for historic 50/50 gender balance on the Board.

How Do I Choose a Secure Interactive Voting Solution for AGMs?

For sports federations planning hybrid AGMs, prioritize these 5 criteria World Sailing used:

1. Electoral Independence: Separate platforms and platform management for sensitive elections to increase confidence of voters.

2. Hybrid Performance: <2min votes despite livestream delay. After most people voted, see if there are still votes incoming and if not, close.

3. Access Resilience: Magic Links + QR codes fallback + username fallback

4. Multi-Layer Security: 5+ fallback systems (see below)

5. Self-Service: If you have the ressources, try to focus on self-service to decrease vendor dependency, and access instant admin control. If that's not possible, make sure to choose a voting management software that supports online or on-site support.

What is the Best Annual General Meeting Software for Secure Voting?

The best AGM online voting solutions for World Sailing was NemoVote. It combined World Sailing's requirements:

• ✅ Secure voting with confidence: Olympic elections are as close to political votings as it gets. Security of and confidence in the system was the major factor to choose NemoVote.

• ✅ Instant Results: Live vote streaming for Electoral Boards

• ✅ Hybrid Ready: On-site + remote voters with identical UX and easy access.

• ✅ Self-Service optionally: No vendor lock-in or per-event pricing

• ✅ Cost Predictable: Subscription model vs increasing per-use fees

AGM Election Security Solutions: What World Sailing Did Right

World Sailing achieved agm election security solutions through:

• Independent Electoral Board oversight, chaired by Margot Foster

• Color-coded platforms preventing confusion for voters

• QR code access eliminating email dependency: Because 1% of people always have issues accessing their emails.

• Preparation: 5-layer fallback infrastructure, preparation talks with the NemoVote team months ahead and just overall good planning. 

• Added tip: Make sure voters familiarize themselves with the voting tool before the elections!

  For world sailing, all delegates (voters) have been informed to come to the helpdesk a day ahead of the election, making sure that anyone tried to test vote and helping anyone that struggled, whilst receiving and confirming the ballot of the test vote for everyone who has been able to vote without any help (which was 98% of all voters).

1 NemoVotes very first QR Code Voter: Christos Christoforou (Cyprus Sailing President) testifying how easy it was to cast the ballot with the QR Code. Needed, as he did not access the credentials via mail. "It just worked!"

2 Front to back : Aaron Lesicar (COO), Florian Tischler (CEO), Marco Hämmerle (CTO) all present at the world sailing agm hybrid event to manage the election

3 NemoVotes Technical Live Support printing QR Codes for hybrid voters. Easy for anyone, but in this case Marco Hämmerle (CTO) personally took care.

4 QR Codes with Magic Links, that log voters into their personal account, such that they can only cast a ballot once, can be downloaded and printed directly through the NemoVote platform. A gamer changer for hybrid events like the World Sailing General Assembly. able to read.

The Setup: Preparing for Vice Presidential Elections

Two Independent Platforms

1. General/Council Voting: World Sailing's NemoVote subscription (Prepared by World Sailing, carried out by NemoVote)

2. VP Elections: Prepared and carried out completely independently from World Sailing, by NemoVote + Independent Electoral Board (Chair: Margot Foster)

On-Site Help Desk Success

NemoVote's pre-event help desk identified 1 email issue day-before and then printed QR code on-site. During the vote, two members did not find their access, printing the 2 QR-Codes took about 1 minute. We've also closely monitored the chat in case any hybrid voter would have issues, but no hybrid disturbances.

Election Day: Seamless Hybrid Voting Performance

• On-site voters: Votes complete in seconds

• Remote voters: 1-2min livestream latency → still <2min total

• Electoral Board: Live vote monitoring, instant majority calculations for general business votings, Elections completed seamlessly after short formal introduction to the sports club voting software.

  ---

Unique NemoVote Features That Made the Difference

QR Code Access: Hybrid Voting Innovation

Especially for hybrid events and just in time for the world sailing event we released the QR-Code Feature. Out of NemoVote Magic Links can be converted to QR-Codes, printed and handed out. Voters with email typos/delivery failures scanned the printed QR codes for instant ballot access. Analog distribution, digital voting, instant results.

Magic Link + Fallback Chain

Primary: Magic Link (Secure link to voter account)→ QR Code → Username/Password → Manual email fallback.

Challenges & Multi-Layer Fallback Solutions

Lumi Global vs NemoVote: What World Sailing Chose

Results & Feedback: A Vote of Confidence

"We've gone high-tech!"

"I really like the idea of using a platform rather than a device, because it's so much simpler."

"It worked really well!"
— Margot Foster, Electoral Board Chair + Board Members

https://youtube.com/shorts/8N9_K4mst_k?feature=share

"It went very smooth!"

"The reason we used NemoVote, is because we use NemoVote for the rest of our meetings throughout the year"
— Antonio Cozzolino, General Counsel World Sailing

World Sailing praised NemoVote's calm professionalism. Additional Olympic federations now planning NemoVote AGMs for 2026.

1 Making sure that hybrid participation works: World Sailing live streamed the event. Almost 50 delegates worldwide participated hybridly.

2 General Business Votings: Votes about approving meeting minutes and controversial motions have been voted on.

3 NemoVotes Technical Live Support printing QR Codes for hybrid voters. Easy for anyone, but in this case Marco Hämmerle (CTO) personally took care.

4 Rashid al sulaiti (Voting Delegate and President of Qatar Sailing) endorsed the event and voting with NemoVote. "Great Experience"

Lessons Learned: Best Practices for Hybrid AGM Voting

• Single Platform: Avoid 2-platform confusion despite color-coding
• Abstention Toggle: We are developing a new feature! Configurable majority calculations per statutes
• On-Site Support: Instant issue resolution builds trust
• Pre-Event Testing: Help desk and test votes prevents Day-1 surprises

FAQ: Hybrid Voting for Sports Organizations

Online voting for NGOs & federations →

Conclusion: Secure Hybrid AGMs Are the Future

World Sailing proved hybrid voting platforms deliver flawless democratic participation for global sports federations. From QR code innovation to 5-layer resilience, NemoVote made it possible.

Planning your next AGM, council election, or board vote? Try the live demo or explore security features.

We interviewed Nelia about here experience with NemoVote: Listen here to our joint podcast episode