Does Roberts Rules allow appointment to HOA Board by secret ballot

Annette,
I think you need to do some more research in your HOA documentation and maybe State law. I going to leave the legal stuff to others who can provide Chapter and Verse.

Elections or Appointments are for board seats not Director seats. You mention you have 2 candidates for president and 2 for vice president. My opinion is you have 4 candidates running for the 2 board seats. The board once elected should appoint positions. I would also suggest that the newer members of your board should not be considered for the president unless they have many prior years of related experience. They have no idea all the back information that they should know. Many new members can take a year or 2 to totally get a handle on the job they are volunteering to take.

Agreeing with others, the board elects officers at an open (in FL) board meeting, This is not done at a members (owners) meeting because members have no voice is th election of officers.

Directors may nominate themselves and may vote for themselves. You must follow standard board procedure where a director/self nominates the president, a director seconds. Then another director is nominated for president and seconded. Assuming both accept the nomination, according to Robert's pieces of paper may be handed to all directors, who write their preferred name on it & fold it.

If you have a property mgr. that person collects the ballot and announces the winner. It's best if there's second neutral person to confirm the winner. There's no requirement to say how many votes each received. The winner immediately becomes president (unless some future date was specified, which would be unusual) and sits in the president's place.

the new president a calls for nominations for VP. Repeat as above. Note that the the loser for the office of president may nominate self as VP and if seconded, fine. Any other nominations must also e seconded. Blank pieces of paper are again passed to directors , who vote.

Some years ago, as a director who knew there was going to be competition among two directors for president, I did look this up in Robert's Rules of Order. And I found secret ballots among directors for officers is OK. Trouble is that I cannot search for it now and not till later today. It's possible someone has the time & ability. Hope the meeting isn't today!

So, Robert's Rules Order Newly Revised (RONR), 11th ed. pretty much state that unless your HOA's Bylaws say otherwise, your board may use ballots as I described above to elect officers. But first, the Board must vote to use ballots if not required by the Bylaws. Check pp. 414-416

Our Board has done this whenever there has been competition for an officer's positions, which does seem to happen every few years. This helps avoid hurt feelings among loers who must still be good, we hope, board members. And directors feel freer to not vote for their friend, whom they don't think would be good in the officer position.

Btw, if the two directors who were president & VP are still directors, even if no longer officers, they still can vote for those officer positions. On the other hand if, say, the VP was that officer. but NOT a director, as permitted in many HOA's bylaws, s/he may not vote for new officers. Only directors may.

I bought the RONR shortly after I joined our HOA's board because we experienced a couple of issues that weren't covered by our Bylaws or state statute. Calif. requires Robert's or some other parliamentary procedure for Meetings of Members (owners), it's not required for board meetings (tho' individual Bylaws may require it). Our Board's policy, however, was to turn to Robert's if no higher-level source could help.

Over 14 years of Board service, I found it useful very rarely. BUT, secret ballots for officers as OK was good to know. One of our presidents insisted that board-approved minutes could not be revised, and Robert's showed her to be wrong.

The most useful is what a Board should do if it approves a motion, but later in the meeting, a director realizes, or an owner points out in open forum, that there's something wrong with the decision. Per Robert's, someone who voted in favor of the approved motion makes a motion to "reconsider the decision previously made." It must be seconded. Then the Board discusses the faulty approved motion and votes to abandon that decision. It then may make a new motion that is accurate.

Related is that at a subsequent meeting, a director realizes or it's been pointed out to her, that a decision made by the board at the last meeting is flawed. In CA, that director would place on the meeting agenda. "Rescind the 3/27/23 Decision to Paint All Exterior Doors Barbie Pink." At the meeting, a director makes the motion to "rescind the decision previously made, etc...." someone seconds it. Then discussion and vote.

I believe both of these are in RONR's Index under reconsider and rescind.