Two items, Lease of a Dwelling Unit and Vote count

State of Florida

There is no mention of approval or disapproval.

8.2 Application for Transfer

An application for the transfer of a membership or for a conveyance of interest in a Dwelling Unit or a lease of a Dwelling Unit shall be accompanied by an application fee in the amount of thirty-five DOLLARS ($35.00) to cover the cost of contacting the references given by the applicant and such other fit costs of investigation that may be incurred by the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors shall have the right to increase or decrease the application fee.

2.Passing an amendment.

By not less than eighty percent (80%) of the vote of the entire membership of the Association

How are non votes counted.

For answers to legal questions, talk to an attorney - after you take a look at your governing documents and see what they say. If this stuff winds up in court, you will also have to contend with how a judge would look at it, given the facts of the case (whatever they are), so there may not always be a quickie or simple answer.

But since you asked, here's one person's response - take it for what it's worth, since I don't live in Florida:

#1 - if the board has a right to increase or decrease the transfer fee, it probably doesn't need homeowner approval on whether to increase it or how much it will be increased. The $35 may be what the legislature settled on at the time this law was enacted.

#2 - Non-votes are just that - you can't assume they're for or against a proposal, so if you have, say, 200 units and need 80% or 160 (I'm assuming one vote per household), the non votes may or may not help the proposal pass or fail, depending on what side you're on. In this case, if 190 homes cast a vote and the remaining 10 do nothing, your concern should be whether you get the 160 - less than that and the proposal doesn't pass.

As others have said, non-votes (abstentions) are simply someone who didn't vote.

They are not counted as a yea or nay.

Although the lack of voting may have the affect of stopping a proposal from being adopted (because the Association fails to obtain the number of yea votes required), the simple fact is that non-votes are simply not counted.

Therefore, if you have 100 members, per your documents, you need 80 yea votes for the amendment to be adopted.
If you have 79 people cast votes and all are in favor of the amendment, even if nobody else voted, the amendment fails to be adopted because it did not receive the 80 yea votes required.