election disaster

Please bear with me, I will try to make this short and to the point, but we need advice!!!!
We are a 57 home community. We had our annual meeting for election in September, and it turned out to be a disaster. One of the members was in the reers with unpaid late fees and wanted her husband to be placed on the ballot. We had previously told her before the meeting, 'pay your balance, and he can be added'. She did not. During the meeting she stood up, totally disrupted the meeting screamed etc and would not stop. another member finally could take no more, and he stood up, made a motion to forgive her debt, and allow her husband name be on the ballot, and it was 2nd, and 3rd. These were not her friends, but members who wished for the embarassing situation to stop. We had to delay the election and adhere to these requests. ok, round two.

We have a secret ballot form and since we could not hold another meeting, we personally delivered each and every home a ballot with deadlines. We received all the ballots 42 were returned, and after getting the election committee together to validate these, it was about 3 weeks or so. Needless to say, the husband in question did not win.

Now we received this email from the wife. "Our understanding is that a resident of our neighboor made a request to be present when the votes were opened and tallied. It is also our understanding that she was not permitted to do that and then was presented with a summary of the votes and asked to sign it indicating that she was validating the results, which she declined to do since she was not present at the counting of the votes.

We're positive that you'll agree that our Homeowner Association Board has an obligation to keep all ballots and that they be available for review. A large number of neighbors returned their ballots after marking them in such a way that they would be able to recognize their own ballot and ensure that their votes had not been tampered with. We hereby request to review all of the ballots and look forward to your speedy response, especially given the unacceptable delay in relaying the results of the election. public".

Now here are my questions/concerns. First and foremost, I am the chairperson for the election committee, and her first paragraph is absurd. We never received a request for additional help, after begging for this, and I have the only copy of the summary sheet, and never asked anybody but those present to sign this sheet. I have the ballots and will bring them, but by reading her email I feel that this could open up a whole can of worms.

1. I'm afraid if these neighbors are acquaintances of this person, they could say they placed a fictious marking, and needless to say, it won't be there, so they will then say....'where is my ballot'?
2. do they have the right to do this?
3. what do we say?
4. HELP???

Our last board meeting is this Thursday, please respons quickly. Thank you
mary ann

Roger,
Thank you for the advice.
I agree with you the way this was handled was wrong, which has resulted in this situation. The question I still have for you or others is this. We did not have a double envelope process. Our process was a bit more complexed, as we hand delivered each available person a ballot and they signed off on a master sheet stating they received it. I delivered 55 as one was not in good standing, and one was not available. We only received back 42. Then that person voted and returned them to the election committtee folded over. No envelope needed. So if as you read her email, she wishes to review the ballots, what do I do/say? show them to her? Or do we say, "here is the ballot received list with all the signatures, as this was a secret ballot, the actual ballot are not allowed to be reviewed". and if she then accuses us the board of tampering/altering, since we are not allowing her to witness the actual ballots?
Thanks

gloria,
we are a small new hoa, and to be truthful, we should be a maintance association, vs an hoa one. We do follow the Roberts Rule etc, but unfortunately, this was way out of hand. Anyway, your reply is appreciated, however you didn't answer my question. The member is question, weather it is right/or wrong was forgiven her late fees, and she is a good standing member now. It wasn't like the HOA was out the money, our declarants do not state late payment assessments. Now onto the ballots. You state she can review them? but at a cost? These are suppose to be secret ballots. I just need to find out if she can review these and how to I say the vote stands, and the ballots are here, but they were a secret ballot.

Mary:

Roger answered the question. Thanks Roger.