Equal access to distribution list

Our elections are getting contentious. A current board member wrote an email to all owners. The acting property manager who is also on the current board and whose seat is up for election. Just used the association office manager email to forward that email to the complete email distribution list. This obviously is not ok. And in Texas I see some hoa election requirements for equal access to media. I am going to request my response be sent from the official email address of the association. Does the law back me up?

You may or may not access to the email addresses of all members per Texas code. In California, owners are, within certain criteria. But, sending a response back through their "offical" address probably won't happen, and I don't believe any law will back you up.

I absolutely did not request access to the email list. I specifically asked him to forward my response to the same list. He said no. He said, I'm only an owner candidate and the original message came from a board member.

please note.. we are a self managed condominium community. Our common funds pay our on site property manager.

Despite being warned of the conflict of interest, the board voted to hire a fellow board member to run the office and manage the property maintenance.

This was supposed to be a temporary stop gap. The board however failed to actively search for a full time licensed property manager . They had a few interevews 6 months ago and nothing since.

The point is, the property manager is actually a board member. His seat is one of the ones up for election. He is not unbiased. He is absolutely not objective. And if he forwarded the other candidates email to the entire association and resident list , I should be able to have my response sent to the same list.

Where?

So far I see nothing in TPC 82 or BO 22.

so far the attempts to suppress owner participation in the annaul election include the following actions or inaction

1. sending out notices asking for volunteer candidates that did not arrive until on or after the deadline date for submission.

2. documentation and several clarification emails at different times over the past 5 years clarifying the order and pattern of staggered board seats indicates that even years have 5 seats up for election and odd years have 4 seats up for election. Without any notice or valid explanation, the managing agent(just an advisor not the property manager) sent out election notices and indicated there were only 4 seats up for election. (5 is a majority, this is a big deal)

3. one would think to just look at last years election results and if last year was 4 then this year is 5. But last year all 9 seats were put up for election because the board did not hold an election in 2020. (covid shutdown occurred the week of the rescheduled annual election) I did locate the original annual meeting notice sent by managing agent to owners for the upcoming 2020 elections. The notice states that 5 seats are up for election in the year 2020. Despite providing this to the board, they chose to go with 4 seats this year.

4. The association main email used only for association to owner notices and communication was used to send out a critical, misleading letter to all owners warning them not to vote for the resident candidates.
the association then refused to forward my line item response to the aforementioned letter using the association main email.

I mean, this is like the twilight zone. I full expect there to be some kind of secrecy when the managing agent tallies the proxies. I haven't started researching yet what a candidates rights are to view the tallying.

LaskaS, I think that most people would agree that it’s unfair for a Board member to broadcast campaign material via the neighborhood ‘email blast’ mechanism. But I haven’t found any explicit Texas law on the matter.

Pragmatically, I think you can make a good argument to your Board to stop doing that kind of thing. Not so good an argument that you should be allowed ‘equal time’.

For what little it might help: my neighborhood sent out candidate applications to everyone via email. If you wanted to run, you filled out the application, sent it in by the due date - and afterwards copies of the collected candidate applications were sent to everyone via email, along with ballots. This past election we used a third-party ‘electronic voting’ system, which was administered by the PMC. Not that this was perfect. I’m mentioning all of this because I wonder if you’d be better off spending your time and effort working with the Board to set up a reasonably good, reasonably fair system for election mechanics.

BillD

Good advice.

the pm forwarded a letter that had already been sent by a board member , basically calling me a liar. I'm not going to post it here. it won't further the conversation. however, rest assured, it was in no way a neutral or informational announcement about the annual meeting,

Mellissa. i am continuing to gather proxy's . If i'm not elected. i'm not elected. However, the repeated actions or inactions that have gone on leading up to this election are indefensable.

If i win, i'm still going to make damn sure this never happens again in an election. I won't let it get in the way of the work that needs to be done to move forward with common area improvements.

Billd16, thanks for the information. I agree that your suggestion may be a better approach. stop the property manager from sending out campaign smear material against an candidate.

Regarding the electronic voting. Actually, I already suggested the board look into electronic voting. I went so far as to set up a test vote that would should each of them how secure it was and how there were safeguards in place to prevent unauthorized votes or voters. Not a single board member bothered to follow the link and test out the trial run.

If i get on the board, I will absolutely start working towards putting together all the information the other board members should have to properly consider the idea.