Voting at the Yearly BOD elections

Started by AlexM1 • 5 replies • 995 views

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AlexM1 (Oklahoma)
Posts: 287

Posted:

We recently held our annual BOD elections. One irate owner is demanding that we make all votes known and she is going to the management office this coming week to find out who voted for who. Is this legal?

KerryL1 (California)
Posts: 14,550

Posted:

Well, do you secret ballots in OK HOAs? Or not?

In CA, owners can examine the ballots after an election but there are no identifiers on them because they are secret; so no one would known who voted for whom.

JanetB2 (Colorado)
Posts: 4,219

Posted:

Kerry hit the nail on the head ... it would depend on your documents and / or state laws. Many states require secrete ballots, so who voted for who would not be available. Consider ... does the owner think they could go to their local voting office and see records regarding who voted for who in their local government or national election. Of course not ... the reason most voting is confidential is so that voters do not have to fear repercussion from other neighbors or citizens on who they voted for or why.

GeorgeR8 (Arizona)
Posts: 182

Posted:

For us votes for people are secret anything else isn't.

LetA (Nevada)
Posts: 2,679

Posted:

Same here in Nevada. No names other than the candidate. Even the return address field is that of the CM office. Ballots are sealed in a blank envelope.

owners may inspect the ballots, I don't know what more they want.

TimB4 (Tennessee)
Posts: 21,062

Posted:

Typically, the voting info is part of the Association records and allowed to be viewed by members.

The members should be able to inspect:

List of members eligible to vote
Sign-in sheet
proxy notifications (if used)
Physical Ballots
Tally Sheet

I did not find any requirement for a secret ballot within the corporations code (but I may have missed it).

If there is a requirement for secret ballots and the Association failed to provide secret ballots, that is an issue. If there is no requirement for secret ballots, and the Association chose to identify ballots with names, then that is also on the Association.

Bottom line, any member should be able to view the above records regarding elections (at least that is my understanding)

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