There was a question recently in LinkedIn for those who are in the Toastmasters International Members group, the official LinkedIn group of Toastmasters International, from a Toastmasters member from India regarding a Division Lt. Governor competing in an Evaluation contest:

I wanted to know from you the rules.. can a Lt. Governor for Division participate in the Evaluation Contest? Currently, we have a suituation where the Lt. Governor for Division is the Division level Evaluation contest winner. I am not too sure if this is okay?

If this person did not confuse Division with District, then yes the Division Lt. Governor (or what other Districts would term Assistant Division Governor) is eligible to compete in the contest.  Page 16 of the 2008 contest rulebook explains the following regarding Evaluation Contestant eligibility:

The following are ineligible to compete in this contest: incumbent international officers and directors; district officers (governor, any lieutenant governor, secretary, treasurer, public relations officer, division governor, or area governor) whose terms expire June 30; international officer and director candidates; immediate past district governors; district officers or announced candidates for the term beginning the upcoming July 1; presenters of educational sessions at the area, division, and district event at which the contest will be held.  An individual may not be a judge at any level for a contest in which they are still competing.

Assistant/Lt. Governor of an Area or Division is not considered an official District position in Toastmaster International terms (probably for some Districts) so the rules do not prevent a Lt. Governor for a Division from competing.

This also applies to other positions a District has designated.  District 30, for instance, has a Sergeant-At-Arms, a Parliamentarian, an Audit Committee Chair, a Directory Editor, an Educational Achievements Chair, a Newsletter Editor, a Nominating Committee Chair, a Rules Committee Chair, a Speakers Bureau Chair and a Youth Leadership Chair.  Assuming that none of them hold any official District position listed in the above rule, they are all eligible to compete – actually the Directory Editor this year is not eligible as he is an International Director.

Recently I talked to the Speakers Bureau Chair, a close friend who was one of my Area Governors when I was Division Governor, and she mentioned that she wasn’t sure she could compete due to her District 30 position.  I told her she can, and she is probably kicking herself as her club and her Area did not have any Evaluation contestants, so she could have competed in her Division Evaluation Contest assuming she met the time in the Area Contest.

Some of the comments from the LinkedIn question concerned whether the member in question should compete as that person may be prominent in his or her Division which could potentially give that person an unfair advantage over other contestants.  The response I wrote below in LinkedIn mentioned that it probably is no different from other particular contestants:

As mentioned above, by contest rules a Division or Area Lt. or Assistant Governor is allowed to compete and should not be prohibited from competing in any contest during their term.

It does put everyone in a contest, whether the Assistant Governor, the Contest Chair, the judges and other contestants in a delicate situation in which nothing good could come out of it. Then again, you could say the same thing for a perennial contestant who wins most of the time, a past District or International officer (especially a past District Governor or International Director), a past District contest winner, a past World Champion finalist, or any prominent Toastmaster who is well-known among the Area/Division/District contest personnel – I’ve seen cases here in District 30 and even the Region V contest in which I personally believe any of these factors affected the outcome of the contests.

Being one of these people can even be held against them if they are polarized figures, or belong to a club that had been frowned upon.

It is this sort of situation that should motivate a Contest Chair to appoint an experienced and well-respected Chief Judge and help select judges who have no personal preference or grudges. The Chief Judge must make a point in the briefings, maybe repeatedly, that the judges must based their decisions on what the contestants do during the actual contest and absolutely not take the past or future into consideration.

So if you are in a situation like the one in India, you need to check the official rulebook, perhaps contact Educational Programming in Toastmasters International directly to make sure it is interpreted properly, then make sure the contest is properly set up in which all the contestants can be judged fairly and not one can have an unfair advantage over others.