Asentee ballot irregularity

My first thought is that they're trying to come up with a way to identify legitimate votes and prevent duplicates. It's unlikely that anyone is trying to keep tabs on who is voting for whom, but it's possible.

The only thing I'd suggest is that the ballots be submitted in plain envelopes, hold them unopened until the actual vote count takes place, and have them opened by a neutral third party or the election monitors at the meeting.

When I served on past boards, we never ID'd the ballots but verified authenticity by the return address on the envelope marked "ballot" which was not opened until the meeting. I'm actually concerned about it because we have a nominating committee of 1 who deliberately left off candidate names because he did not "like" that person. But that's another story.

That's what I'm concerned about, Richard.

In California, ballots would be the actual ballot as well as the two envelopes, of which the outer envelope is signed. The same hold true for presidential elections.

It's a good subject, Jerry, and often generates a good discussion. Not a waste of time at all IMO.

You're in Florida so in large part the election procedures have different legal requirements depending on whether you're in a condo or a homeowners association. Condo associations have to follow very specific election procedures and methods. An HOA, on the other hand, is very much on its own since FS 720 leaves just about all election specifics up to the individual HOA's bylaws.

If an HOA wants to allow anonymous and/or mail-in absentee ballots in elections then the bylaws have to specifically authorize it. There's no statutory right in an HOA for anonymous voting. If your bylaws say something different then you're good to go with whatever procedures the bylaws call for.

My HOA is the exact opposite... our bylaws say almost nothing about election procedures. There's no provision for anonymous ballots and the fact that we've been using them for years is, according to a couple of attorneys, actually illegal. Like John, we're lucky no one has made a stink about it (yet).