How long can a board member be on the board

Your Bylaws have election requirements. Every community is different.

Unless your governing documents, probably your Bylaws, say otherwise, directors are allowed to serve as long as owners keep electing them.

One reason directors stay on the Board forever in some HOAs is that not enough owners vote at the required annual meeting of owners and elections every year, i.e., there is a not a "quorum" of voters, which your Bylaws might require, so there IS no election and the existing Board keeps serving. Could something like that be happening in your HOA?

Do you get some kind of notice every year about an election of board members, AKA, directors?

Since bylaws can vary a lot from one HOA to another, read yours throughly to learn more about elections of directors.

As long as they are still alive and remain an owner.

And if people DON'T vote, the current board stays by default unless they step down, are recalled or are voted out.

A better question might by why homeowners have let this continue for 20 years. It's one thing if the board has played fast and loose with announcing elections, proxies and all that. Much like the voter suppression laws of late that have kept thick headed old people in Congress, state legislatures and city councils for decades). It's another matter if this has gone on and on because people just don't care (which is how people get away with voter suppression). Don't be surprised if both elements are at play....

When I do not like somebody, I believe in term limits. When I like somebody, I do not believe in term limits. Can I have my cake and eat it also?

I have principals, works out better for all.

Yep, I'm serious. In all these discussions about rouge boards, I've always wondered how two, three, or seven people manage to intimidate a community of 50, 100, or 300 homes, all with one vote per lot into not voting at all or being pressured into voting for the same damned people over and over again. Simple math says 50, 100, or 300 is far more than two, three, or seven, so what's with these homeowners who sit at home and watch TV or wring their hands over the big bad HOA? No, they have more power than they realize, but the issue is no one wants to be the first to step out and say something because let's face it, speaking truth to power is scary and a pain in the ass when the other side bites back. Eventually, we can become so overwhelmed that we disconnect and do nothing, hoping that things won't blow up in our face, at least not until after we get the hell out of there.

You've spoken about apathy in your community and how it's taken a lot of work to get people to care about things like updating the documents - ever wonder how things got to this point? HOA business shouldn't take up all of your time, but for all the work you've done, when will your neighbors realize all of you have a stake in its success? Do they think you're going to do this forever? I've learned that if I wanted to change anything, I had to get off my ass and work for it. It hasn't always been easy and it definitely didn't happen overnight. Sometimes you knock yourself out and people still won't care what you do or why you do it. This is life in all its dirty and when we start on these adventures, we find out pretty quickly how far we're willing to go.

So if things work in your community with one or two people doing all the thinking, congratulations, but I hope someone is looking ahead to the day when those one or two people will be gone and another two or three will have to take over. Then what?

The typical "natural person" corporate statute director requirement means they have to be alive.