Voting in the 2020 Election of World Sailing’s Officers commenced on Friday 9 October when voting packs were distributed to World Sailing’s Member National Authorities.
Voting in the first round of balloting will close at 15:00 hrs UTC on Friday 16 October 2020.
Local Member National Authority (NMA) will have been busy in the lead up to vote . . . In discussions with their individual members and affiliated sailing clubs, on the decisions they will make on behalf of their sailing communities.
The fact is that only the 120 delegates of the paid-up NMA can vote for the President and seven Vice-President positions that are up for election.
How they will vote and what instruction they have received from their local members is not known, although some guidance can be gleaned by the nominations they have made (or not).
Indeed the electronic vote this year could lead to a greater number of NMA voting as they do not have to travel to attend the two week Annual Conference this year (Bermuda last year).
World Sailing has received much criticism from the sailing media with regard to the actions of the organisation over the past four years, especially with regard to the perilous state of the organisation’s finances.
But the fact is that four years ago these same NMA put the present incumbent, Mr Kim Andersen and his vice-presidents in power.
Since then, despite growing media criticism, World Sailing has apparently carried on with its main task of ensuring that sailing remains in the Olympics, with little adverse comment by the NMAs, who ultimately control the voting decisions.
Of course if you do not sail in the ten Olympic classes, with the intention of trying to compete at a Games – this only involved 350 competitors in 2016 – then you are unlikely to be too closely involved in how your NMA representatives were voting at World Sailing.
As we saw with the recent changes to the 2024 Olympic event slate, it is only when a class is likely to lose its Olympic status that there is any criticism of the NMA voting action at World Sailing.
The results of the election will be announced during the General Assembly by the Election Committee on 1 November.
If no Presidential candidate receives more than 50% of the votes in the first round, two further rounds are scheduled for 20-23 October and 26-29 October to conduct run-off votes.
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