Question about elections with no ballots

Background- 185 single family neighborhood in Virginia. Self managed HOA. 5 directors. Same President for 18 years.

I moved in 6 years ago, and have been to 4/5 last annual member meetings. The Annual meeting is where the board of directors are elected.
Our CC&R's say elections are supposed to be held by secret written ballot, and we are to have a nominating committee of 1 director and 2 members.

In reality, our President sends out the meeting announcement and asks that all nominations and Proxies be sent to her email. No one on the board has access to her email. This has occurred at all 5 of the last annual meetings, including 2 of which her seat was up for election.

Last November begore the meeting, I emailed her stating my interest on being on the board. She replied back about a treasurer (officer) position or making a event committe position for me. She failed to mention 4/5 director seats were up election that night, including hers.

Of the last 4/5 meetings I have attended there has never been a nominating committee, or even a ballot. There was never an announcement about how many seats, or what seats were open. She calls for a yay or nay on the floor.

It appears no one knew any better, or cared enough to speak up.

After finally picking up our by-laws, and governing documents two months ago I am appalled. Our President runs the show. There is a long list of other major issues. Including holding the president position along with the treasurer position for up to the last 10 years. Which is a violation of our by-laws.

My question, is do we have grounds to challenge the last election? If so what would that look like? How much do you think it would cost in legal fees? Rough estiment?

Thank you

Thank you for your reply. I left quite a bit out in my previous post. It is complicated, and full of suspense as I'm sure most of these situations are.

To answer your questions- I did not get on the board. There were two of us at the meeting in November who stood up on the floor to show our interest in running. Our President told us we would have to run against one of the other members, who I am friends with. It was akward. At no time did anyone mention there were 3 other seats up, other than my friends. The November meeting had quadrouple the number of members than any other meeting I had been to. Later I found out that several members brought stacks of proxies signed by their neighbors. They wanted change. But, it was their first meeting, and just felt there was no right time to use them. There was no ballot, or really a valid vote.

I admittedly had never pulled out my docs and read them. I had been an active volunteer, and happily helped the board as often as I could. It was not until May of this year when our community pool opened that I, along with many others were upset. None of the repairs that were voted on at the annual meeting were completed. Part of the pool fence was unstable and falling in, the pool house roof is in a state of disrepair and was agreed to be replaced and was not, there was electrical wires hanging out from one of the pool lights in the water and the list goes on and on.

I have rallied the neighbors and have successfully had a petition signed by the required number of members in a matter of 3 days. However, in the mean time the president went on a political campaign in the neighborhood making it more about emotions rather than business and it pitted neighbors against neighbors. It was getting ugly. I have held off submitting the signatures, division is the last thing I want.

In the mean time I have requested and finally was given access to 3 years of financial, and other important documents. I have had an unofficial audit completed by a neighbor CPA and been working diligently to find the best course of action. The audit came back and showed thankfully no misappropriations of funds, but an absolute mismanagement of funds. Late fees, lack of contract oversight resulting in extra charges, and very possibly an immediate family meet working for both large contracts we have with no official disclosure.

We have never had a proper reserve study done, although required by state law. Which, helps explain the lack of planning for anticipated repairs/replacement ect. We have a reserve account that is far below where it should be. Last year we started spending more than we brought in, and that will likely continue for the subsequent years if nothing changes.

The city was called, not by me, for code enforcement on common property structures and it resulted in a laundry list of code violations. The city is working with our president to become compliant. However, no joke, some of the repairs have been done with duct tape and spray paint. The inspectors have been out mutiple times.

It is just a mess. The bod have sat by and let this happen. She has a strong personality, and is a master politician, despite the obvious lack of leadership skills, she has some very strong advocates.

Due to term limits, the best option would be to invalidate the entire 2014 elections. Which would essentially mean we would have all 5 directors seats open in a new election. Wipe the slate clean, and get people on there to clean up the mess. There are very good candidates who want to be on the board. We have several civil engineers who have offered to complete a proper reserve study if we have a new board, and what I believe is a good plan to just start fresh.

Now, I am trying to figure out what challenging an election would look like.

Mistake- not term limits, rather just the director terms. 4 directors seats were up in November 2014, and the remaining director is up in 2015.

90% of all HOA/condo problems are due to that right there. Even if you do have grounds to challenge the last election (sounds like you might) my advice would be to look forward and plan for the next election instead. Going through the challenge process, whatever it is in VA, could be an arduous energy-sapping and soul-crushing experience. And that's if you prevail and win. Save that energy for the next election.

Our nominating committee is a committee of the whole Board.
Why? Because, nobody has ever volunteered to be on the nominating committee that our Board simply fulfills the requirement by making a committee of the whole board.

As for written ballots, if there are the same number of nominees as there are available seats, then vote by affirmation is typically allowed.


Does your Association pay for an Association e-mail?

Our Association hosts a website. Part of that is having the ability to create Association e-mail accounts. Associations that don't have this ability do typically utilize their personal e-mails.


Typically, the nominating committee only has to nominate enough candidates as there are open seats. Unless nominations from the floor are allowed, or your State laws mandate, there may not be a requirement for the committee to accept your willingness to serve as a Director.

Keep in mind, you were not turned down. You were asked to serve as an Officer or a Committee chair.

Did you take them up on this offer?


Well, perhaps nobody has volunteered to take on the Treasurer position.
If they haven't, then perhaps it's a good thing that she is willing to do two jobs instead of one. Again, she did offer that position to you which, if accepted, would eliminate that issue.


Honestly, the answer is it depends.

It depends on what the language is in your governing documents.
It depends on what the language is in your States applicable laws.
It depends on what went on at the Board meetings prior to the annual meeting.
It depends if anybody made an objection at the annual meeting on the procedural process.
It depends on how much time has lapsed between the election and the desire to challenge the results.


You would hire an attorney who would file the necessary documents in court.


Legal fees vary based on the experience of the attorney, the going price in your area, the size of the firm and the complexity of the case. I would suspect somewhere between $100 to $300 an hour (keep in mind, you could have more than one person working on the case and the cost is per hour per individual).

When we last asked what we thought was a couple of simple questions of our attorney, it cost about $600.

My suggestion: Rather then challenge the election, accept the offer to serve as an Officer and see why things are being done the way they are. Then slowly make the changes needed to move things into compliance with the governing documents.