How secure e-voting solutions powered World Sailing's flawless hybrid AGM with 150 global delegates.
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.
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.
| Requirement | World Sailing Specs |
|---|---|
| Total Voters | 146 delegates (100 on-site, 46 remote) |
| Key Challenge | VP elections needed FULL independence from World Sailing operations |
| Performance | Votes complete in <2 minutes per motion |
| Past Tools | Pen/paper, Teams polls, Lumi Global |
For sports federations planning hybrid AGMs, prioritize these 5 criteria World Sailing used:
Electoral Independence: Separate platforms and platform management for sensitive elections to increase confidence of voters.
Hybrid Performance: <2min votes despite livestream delay. After most people voted, see if there are still votes incoming and if not, close.
Access Resilience: Magic Links + QR codes fallback + username fallback
Multi-Layer Security: 5+ fallback systems (see below)
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.
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
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).
General/Council Voting: World Sailing's NemoVote subscription (Prepared by World Sailing, carried out by NemoVote)
VP Elections: Prepared and carried out completely independently from World Sailing, by NemoVote + Independent Electoral Board (Chair: Margot Foster)
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.
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.
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.
Primary: Magic Link (Secure link to voter account)→ QR Code → Username/Password → Manual email fallback.
| Risk | NemoVote Solution | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| WiFi failure | 2 networks + USB hotspot | ✅ Stable |
| Email delivery fail | QR Code Feature | ✅ Used 3x successfully |
| Email provider down | Secondary provider ready | ✅ Not needed |
| Datacenter outage | Backup DC failover | ✅ Perfect uptime |
| Feature | Lumi Global | NemoVote ✓ |
|---|---|---|
| Self-Service Control | Limited | ✅ Full Admin Access |
| Cost Trend (World Sailing exp.) | 📈 Rising yearly | 📉 Significant reduction |
| Hybrid QR Code Access | ❌ Not available | ✅ Proven in live AGM |
| Fallback Layers | Basic | ✅ 5+ Systems Tested |
| Stability | ❌ Several Failure Stories | ✅ No critical failures |
"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.
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