Annual Meeting Question

Kristina

In light of the Covid situation, many of us have faced similar issues.

I believe there is general agreement the use of reasonable alternatives, such as Zoom, is viable and acceptable so long as overarching requirements are addressed: preservation of records, secrecy regarding ballots, proper notice, quorum, etc.

It is doubtful any court, should it come to that, would take you to task for using Zoom and thereby reducing Covid transmission risks should you hold a meeting in a physical "place". Besides (tongue in check), if you hold the meeting using Zoom, the meeting occurs in the physical "place or location" of each participant.

Myself, I would put the Annual Meeting off until the Fall.

JohnC46 - Can you share why you would delay until the Fall? Would you delay the annual meeting, the election or both?

The "place designated by the Board" is the president's home. Only the president is physically there; everyone else calls or Zooms in.

There's another case: a driving urge for some board members to be off the board when their terms end. Every year we seem to have at least one board member who can't wait to be off the board.

To follow up on a question the OP asked in her second post, do any of you have experience with live voting in a Zoom meeting?

How was it done? We have a possible scenario like that in one of our client associations.

Thanks all for the input. We don't want to postpone any longer as a past board member who resigned last year after the neighborhood petitioned for special meeting at which to remove her (long long story) has decided to run this year. Postponing will just allow for even more drama within the neighborhood.

We are working out the details - particularly on how to accept (if at all) votes during the meeting.

Keep the sharing and suggestions coming - they are greatly appreciated!

Yes ballots are able to be sent to our manager by email or postal mail. We have some though that prefer to vote "in person" and we were trying to determine if there would be any way to facilitate an "actual time" vote during a zoom meeting that would still keep the votes confidential. Other than having a drop off location the day of the meeting we couldn't come up with anything.

People are silly. Folks realize this isn't a election for POTUS, right?! And that their one or two votes for the next HOA Board Members aren't going to change the course of history or really matter at all in the grand scheme. They'd rather put you through the ringer because they want to vote "in person".

Unless you really want to expend the effort and resources to devise a plan and then execute it for the sake of a handful of homeowners, just tell people that due to present circumstances, the only way to vote this election is by mail in ballot. Everyone would understand unless they are completely unreasonable.

All that said, a couple of ideas to do what you want:

1) I could easily see voting in-person and in real-time via email or text message. You could authenticate/validate beforehand the voter's email address and cell phone number that they will use to cast their vote. They would text/email whoever is counting the votes. Could even create a special email address just for this election. When the vote comes in, you assign/match that vote to the corresponding homeowner.

2) If hearing the candidates speak or present their qualifications, ideas, reasons for wanting to be a Board Member is what's got homeowners wanting to vote in-person, you could host a pre-election zoom meeting whereby candidates can talk and be seen as well as debate or contradict other candidates if that happens in your HOA. Then after candidates have been heard, the votes are mailed in and must be received by a certain date.

A somewhat valid point . . . although I could argue the opposite, and you've taken some of my words out of context. My statement was mostly tongue-in-cheek.

Main point was that people are still being given the opportunity to vote and the Board is working to make the meeting happen amid a global pandemic and now civil unrest in the nation.

There's just a handful of silly owners who (for some reason) don't like the currently-proposed voting method, instead wanting the ability to vote in-person which would necessitate unnecessary effort to execute. The juice isn't worth the squeeze in my opinion. Personally, I'd only expend effort for those types of things if I am in agreement that it's necessary. In this case, I don't think it's necessary.