How to Break a Tie Vote for President

Our actions are Th. 10/25. We have a board of seven but our bylaw-mandated commercial director never attends.

Very likely the vote for president will be tied 3-3. The current prez of two years will be reelected to the board and will want to be president again.

Three of us don't want her, and one of us three has said he'd serve if elected.

Is a coin flip the only way to settle this after 2-3 three rounds of secret ballot? Any other ideas?

Our bylaws say the president must preside at meetings. Could a compromise be to let the VP-our preference for prez, preside? Otherwise th president has very little power because we've delegated all routine tasks and the direction of staffers to our PM.

John's option sounds good. So too does your compromise option, Kerry. Also consider having one peron serve as President for six months, then the other person takes over for the remaining six months.

If you have another candidate who is willing to run, why is that not accepted as another choice at the time of the election?

Take all the nominations, and then vote.

And tell all voting members to get their butt to the very important meeting. You may think there is not much for the president to do, but it IS a very important position.

Hypothetically, you have an election where there are three open slots and four people running, of which only one is a current Board member. Why hasn't either side campaigned to get the new people on their side?

If you did a coin, how does that change Board votes at Board meeting, you still have 3-3 tie with the commercial never showing up?

The Comm. director has only attended one mtg. all year, an Ex. Sess. I walked into ES last evening and a stranger was sitting at the table so I introduced myself & asked her name. She said she's a commercial owner staffer sitting in for the commercial rep. I turned to the others and said there can be no subs or “proxies” for board members.

The prez asked how did I know that and I replied it had happened before years ago. Anyway, the woman left. It occurred to me the president had some inking that electing the prez was going to be close and sought the comm. rep's help to be a tiebreaker.

The organizational mtg. was exciting for a moment. New director A nominated old but reasonable director B as Prez and new director C seconded. Old prez was nominated, etc. They did a secret ballot and it was tied. THEN director C withdrew (to avoid “divisiveness”). Ol' bully lady is prez again.

But maybe the tie will give her a clue? In addition, for the election, she rec'd 86 votes and a new guy 113!! That's the most anyone's ever received here. Btw, of 200+ residential units, there were 93 valid ballots.. We usually get low 80s-90. Absentee balloting almost assures we reach quorum. About 27% of owners live offsite, many in other states.