Votes and proxies

Our Board (God love them, always prone to take the hard way),

has decreed for the Annual meeting this coming Sat that the votes will be counted prior to meeting, during the week by personal unknown and results will be announced at meeting. In other years, prior, nominaations could be made from floor and you go vote at meeting. No proxy vote allowed foe ballot.
Our By-laws does not specify except to give aan agenda to be followed which is not the agenda the board wants followed. To me completely wrong. How about opinions and some solutions. This action by board is asking for trouble.

RobertR1 - In my HOA and COA this could not occur. Votes are submitted at the meeting, proxy holders bring the proxy vote,nominations are taken from the floor, judges are appointed and the votes are counted. You will need to provide the board a friendly letter objecting to the procedure and why, site state laws if necessary, and outline the correct procedure.

Robert, if you are concerned I suggest you call the President ASAP and advise them you will expect the By-laws to be followed. If the agenda is not followed you can call a "point of order" at the meeting to require the agenda be followed. Just because the Board wants to follow a different agenda does not give them the right to do so unless there is an approval of members present to suspend the rules. You could also request a recount of the vote at the meeting by members appointed by the chair. And you could asked the President why the Board is changing from the past established procedure of taking nominations from the floor at the meeting. The chances of getting the old procedures improve if done promptly. Also having lots of proxies to vote could help

RobertR1 - Personally I think Robert's Rules are parliamentary and a waste if followed to the nit picky level, or letter of the rule. IMO, the rules will bog a board in procedure. An HOA isn't the house of representatives for god sakes. If by-laws don't mention Roberts, all the better. Each board meeting needs to be run with common sense, a good agenda and respect. IMO Robert's, as a whole will constrict a Board.

Update on original post about voting for annual meeting.

Our Board president has now decreed the votes will be counted at annual meeting with the two candidates in attendence. Now, this is certainly an improvement. But, always a "but", this does not resolve all the problems with the meeting. I know some Board members will probably tell me just to be happy to get this much. Ir remains that the Board will not be conducting the meeting following the Agenda spelled out in our by-laws. It remains the Board demanded that all votes be in by the 9th of April, meeting is on 14th. It remains there apparently are not going to be nominations from the floor or voting at the meeting. Then we have the problem of proxy votes. They also were due in on the 5th so, there will be no submission of Proxies from the floor or you will not be able to change your proxy or ballot at the meeting.
On top of that, there is no explanation of why we are changing our normal agenda that we have followed for years. In other words, whaat is the reason for all this confusion and trouble?

Robert's Rules for small groups is much easier to deal with. I'm not a big fan of Robert's Rules either, but if you know you're going into a contentious meeting, then setting a few ground rules often helps. Here's the link to Robert's Rules for small groups (community associations:

http://www.communityassociations.net/states/virginia/ca_parliamentary_proc.htm

Joe