Restating CC&R's

Our CC&R's are dated 1998 but they are well written and cover the essential stuff at the time. We have tried a total revision but it reflected a totally new format used by the attorneys. It was rejected and the total vote wasn't even close to the total Yes votes we needed. Any thoughts on sticking with the old CC&R's and just update the legal stuff as currently stated in each Article. I think it would be a lot likely to get approved. Maybe we could even have a separate list of legal and code updates referring to Article #'s that could be used in conjunction with the original CC&R's and not even take it to a vote? Thoughts??

You might want to start with polling the homeowners to see why the revision was shut down. Here are a few possibilities:

People just don't care (it's harsh, but apathy is a thing in HOAs)
People read them, but there was too much to go through, so they just said the hell with it - I'm not going to read all this stuff because they might put in something I don't agree with anyway and are trying to sneak it past us
People did read it, and objected to several revisions, but because you couldn't approve some and not others, they tossed the whole thing
The new format is still full of legalese, which no one likes to wade through (including attorneys)
People forgot to vote because life happens and before they knew it, the deadline had passed

Once you know what the primary issues are, you could work on those and represent them, although I think it would be easier to prioritize which changes are more critical than others and focus on getting those approved first. The other issues can be presented at a later date