Undirected Proxy Voting

Are you sure your Bylaws don't permit the Board to fill vacancies ? That's typical with many Bylaws stating the if the Board doesn't, fill a vacantcy, owners can.

If your documents allow it, I don't see any reason why you couldn't use directed proxies. Like I said in your last conversation, people have to be adult enough to read it and decide what they want the proxy to do. If they can't figure that out, they can't attend the meeting and participate that way. It takes a considerable amount of work to race around a neighborhood to convince people to yo do X, and at the last minute, they wind up sitting at home and doing nothing - or sign the form allowing the proxy to vote however the proxy wants.

Since you can't control how or why people do anything, the best you can do is educate on the proposed new budget, encourage questions and be honest with the answers. You can also encourage peopke to ATTEND the meeting themselves so they can hear and see for themselves, and then cast their vote. If you win, congratulations. If not, that's life - you're old enough to know you don't always get what you want and sadly, recent events on the planet demonstrate that people are gullible, don't always use common sense or just stumble through life asking what the hell just happened.

What exactly are you afraid of? Do you think your opponents will howl at the wording and claim you're trying to manipulate the homeowners? What's scary about asking people to indicate if they want the proxy to establish quandary nothing else, designate do and do to vote on the owner's behalf whatever way they choose, or make the proxy do double duty as a ballot and they can vote the budget up or down?

Once again, if your board doesn't know how to write a proxy, ask the association attorney to help you. I'm sure there are sample proxies around tge web - try googling it and see if there's something you can adzpg.

There is no reason why a Board couldn't use only directed proxies. It's their choice.
There is no reason why a Board couldn't propose an amendment to the governing documents to only use directed proxies.

A Board, most likely, may not ban proxy use.

That said, we use a combined form. It can be a general proxy or, if the member chooses, a directed proxy.

The Board, prior to sending out the proxies will also take a vote on how to allocate general proxies assigned to the board.

I've never heard of this either, but in my community, our proxy allows homeowners to designate the board president to vote on their behalf if they didn't specifically name someone.

If you'd googled this, you would have come up with the following from the Davis-Stirling website. A HOA law firm in California sponsors the website which provides all sorts of information on the Davis-Stirling HOA law - I find there's a lot of practical information people could adapt to HOAs in their own state.

Anyway, here's what it says on the subject:

"Discretionary Proxies. In elections where members assign undirected or discretionary proxies to the board of directors, the board may vote them as they choose. The board may:

* use them for quorum purposes only,

* cast votes evenly between the candidates, or

* vote for particular candidates (including themselves if they are candidates)

Executive Session. The decision by the board on how to cast votes may be done in executive session. Because the election laws require secret balloting, the board is not required to discuss and decide in open session how it intends to vote their proxies.

Directed Proxies. Directed proxies are proxies where the owner has indicated on the proxy how the proxyholder is to vote for the owner. Directed proxies assigned to the board must be voted as indicated on the proxy.

Recommendation: To eliminate potential discord created by board proxies, associations should amend their governing documents to eliminate proxies and eliminate quorum requirements for the election of directors.

I don't know if the rest of your board and/or your homeowners are as befuddled about proxies as you seem to be, but y'all may want to consider that recommendation, especially if you're concerned about people manipulating the process. Send everyone a ballot they would have to mail in or look into electronic voting (an emerging HOA issue). You'd probably have to decide if people could send in a ballot, then show up at the meeting, cancel the mail in ballot and vote as usual, but having worked the polls in my community, it is possible. You just have to take the time to think it through - and poll the homeowners to see if this would be something they'd even be interested in.

I agree.

Often, general proxies are assigned to the board (happens in many associations).

Our board, prior to the proxies being sent out, would specify how the ballots for those general proxies would be cast.
Otherwise, the individual holding the proxies (typically the Secretary) could cast ballots how they thought was best.