FL HOA - voting

Started by JesseE1 • 1 replies • 109 views

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JesseE1 (Florida)
Posts: 9

Posted:

We will be having our annual meeting in early April for elections. We are a small (142) SFH community in FL. We operate with a CDD, who does most of the heavy lifting (ie takes care of the pool, tot lot, monuments, common grounds, etc). The community was turned over by the builder in March 2022. Our new attorney figured out that the builder attorney never filed our Bi-Laws, so they were filed this week. We have surmised according to the bi-laws that there is 1 open seat for this upcoming meeting - the seat held by one of the original board members.

After serving for 5 years on a previous board, I was asked to step onto this board last year. I "ran" unopposed and the person I replaced had wanted to step down (turns out, hers was the 1 year term in the bi-laws). We did not have a quorum - never have, which I know isn't unusual.

My question revolves around the new statutes in this state. This meeting will be in person and any owners who can't or won't be there can send a proxy.

*if a homeowner submits a proxy to the management company, who "controls" their vote?
*We are not a condo and do not do electronic voting. If we allow (or maybe we are required to allow now?) a owner to "phone in" to listen to the meeting, do they have a right to vote by phone?
*are these phoning in owners considered part of the quorum, even if they can't vote?

Thanks for your help!

LoriM15 (Florida)
Posts: 1,009

Posted:

I could attempt to give you a few answers in this forum, but since this is about voting you REALLY need to spend the money to have an attorney answer them.

With HOAs in Florida, if you use a proxy then the owner can designate either the preferred person (usually the secretary) or designate their own.

It is my understanding that if you are not doing electronic voting then you have no obligation to accept anything but written ballots. You would not have to allow phone voting. And I could argue that it’s not secure voting since you don’t know who is actually on the phone.

One suggestion- you really need to think about getting your bylaws changed to a lower number for the quorum. If you do set up electronic voting this will be easier to pass because you get a much higher number of responses with electronic voting. If you don’t lower the number, in the future you are going to have trouble getting business done. While you are amending your documents to get a lower quorum, also change who gets to approve bylaw changes. It is legal in Florida to change the documents so only the board needs to approve bylaw changes and updates.

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