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Holger Knaack, of the Rotary Club of Herzogtum Lauenburg-Mölln, Germany, has been selected to serve as president of Rotary International in 2020-21.

The Nominating Committee's decision follows the resignation last month of President-nominee Sushil Gupta.

Knaack will officially become president-nominee if no other candidates challenge him by 31 May.

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Report from Mike McGovern, Chair of Nominating Committee

Removing Some Mystery on the Choice of a New Rotary President Nominee

This year I had the responsibility of chairing the nominating committee for Rotary International President for 2020-2021. Some of my Rotary friends may be curious how this plays out. As this was filling the vacancy after Sushil Gupta sadly resigned due to some health issues, the 17 member committee asked if the six others we had interviewed in Evanston in August when Sushil was chosen still wished to be considered. They all did. President Barry asked that we make our decision by successive electronic ballots to avoid the cost of an in-person meeting in Evanston. The policy provides that we have a ballot voting for four, then a ballot with our top two choices and then our number one choice. If there is a tie on any ballot all those who were part of the tie would continue onto the next ballot. Members were given about 48 hours to consider each successive ballot. We also had a private dropbox account at which we could look at materials that candidates had earlier submitted and documents with the official qualifications and a listing of assignments within Rotary for each candidate. 

The final ballot requires at least 10 votes of the 17 members. After each ballot an independent ballot counting service sent Rotary’s deputy legal counsel a PDF with the vote totals. It was sent to me and I forwarded it to the other members along with some comments reminding everyone of process issues. The next day the ballot counting service would issue a new ballot with the fewer names and we would all vote again. 
Rotary policy does not permit us to reveal our deliberations or the results of any ballot. There were two issues that I can write about that needed some resolution during the process. There began to be postings on Facebook that in my view could be interpreted as trying to influence the nominating process which was of concern as the current rules prohibit anyone trying to influence the nominating committee. While anyone on the committee had the right to engage regarding the process, my advice to the committee was that no one on the committee itself engage at all on Facebook on our process while our process was ongoing. The policy provides that it is up to candidates to ask Rotarians to cease and desist from trying to influence the committee . This must have occurred as there were then postings that said certain folks had been “muzzled”. If so, the candidate(s) took the proper prescribed action. 
The other question was whether during a “ballot by mail” members of the committee are permitted to talk or email each other. I reviewed this with Rotary legal counsel, and we agreed that we should treat this as much as possible as if we were at an in-person meeting and during the in-person meetings the members of the committee are permitted to deliberate. Thus, I advised all members that they could communicate with each other if they wished to but also wrote them that I was not going to do so. 

On 9 May, I received a call at my home from the Deputy Legal Counsel indicating that a candidate had reached the 10-vote threshold to be our official choice. He told me the totals and we then reviewed the protocol of the announcement process. My key objective was to be sure that the current president, the incoming president, the prospective nominee, the general secretary and the other five candidates not hear of the result by seeing it on Facebook or through other non-official communications. Five individual calls were first made to the other candidates, but they were not told who the successful candidate was. I then called President Barry who was in Europe and informed him who had been selected but asked him to wait 15 minutes to call the nominee as protocol and past practice has the nominee informed by the committee chair. The next step was to call back the deputy legal counsel who then at my request asked the general secretary and President elect Mark Maloney to leave a meeting they were in so they could participate in the phone call directly. At this time, I also hit the send button to the full nominating committee, so they were informed simultaneously with the nominee of their decision. And after a quick look at Facebook, I noted that there were no leaks that I could see. 

Fortunately, nominee designate Holger Knaack answered his phone and I told him of the committee decision. He was speechless and a bit breathless. John Hewko and Mark Maloney congratulated him and then I asked if his wife was hearing his end of the conversation. He said she was elsewhere in their home and not within hearing range. He then said something similar to wow a few times as he pondered the change in their lives. About ten minutes later President Barry spoke with Holger and the general secretary released the decision on the My Rotary website. 

The one other person I wished to speak to at that moment was Sushil Gupta but owing to the late hour in India, I wrote him of our decision. All our best wishes remain for his recovery. 

There is much mystery about this process and I have written this to be as transparent as we can be within the current rules. Clubs have until the end of May to object to the Nominating Committee decision. Assuming there will not be a sufficient number of objections, Holger Knaack will be introduced in Hamburg at our convention as the apparent first ever person from Germany who will become President of Rotary International. Please share if you so desire.