Online Voting?

If they're not voting now, electronic voting might not make much of a difference. That said, there are older conversations on this websites about electronic voting, and if you Google HOA electronic voting, you may find some information on how your state looks at the issue. Although there might not be a lot because this is an emerging issue and state law and (especially) your documents are slow in catching up. Check your documents and perhaps talk to the association attorney to see where you stand.

Considering all the chaos people write about on this website, it's great that your neighbors feel the board is doing a good job (trust me, you'd know if people were pissed). It's also ok to say "thanks for your support, but we really want to hear more from YOU on what you'd like to see." You could start with an article on the community website and/or newsletter noting you haven't had quorum in two years and would like to see that improve. Run a poll to see if the date and time isn't as convenient as you think, should virtual attendance be made available (that could be a great way to increase attendance), etc.

Also: With online voting --

-- Voting participation shot up.

-- The online ballot offered the option not to vote for a candidate but just indicate the ballot was submitted for quorum purposes.

You will 100% get a huge uptick in participation by not burdening homeowners with paper ballots and mandatory in person attendance. Just ensure it's legal in your state and ensure you are using a secure method of recording the votes.

many HOA's that do online voting give people a month to do the voting, we give them 2 months.
we used to have similar participation and now we get 99 out of 120 owners to vote. but the real secrete is to combine it with a financial incentive, like only those that vote will get a $50 dues credit. Compensate for that loss in revenue by increase fees for everyone and the people that dont' want to be bothered to vote will just pay more for that reason.

can't afford that? Then put some ridiculous question on the ballot like the HOA wants to charge a special assessment of $1000 to build a splash pad the size of a football field. that will get people out to vote.

Also dont' pat yourself on the back, many HOA's assume the half dozen facebook posts or messages mean they are doing a good job, but once everyone actually votes find out the silent majority don't even want an HOA. Go ahead put it on the ballot ask if the HOA shoudl be dissolved, just to see what peopel think.

many online voting services can send out nag emails only to those that have not voted. some can even send out nag text messages reminding people to vote. we use a service that rhymes with election muddy, which is $100, but it's not that userfriendly to set up, ironic since their name means election friend.

Thank you for your comments. Our CC&R and By Laws does not directly discuss any form of electronic voting. Before we involve an attorney ($$) I wanted to get some feedback regarding the use of online voting. We have a couple of events that will require HOA members to vote on the sale of property that the state DOT is planning to acquire for Highway widening. That will require membership voting and it must pass in order for us to get a decent price for land sale. If we don't get the required votes the state will acquire the property through eminent domain...something we want to avoid.

Annual voting for HOA BOD positions is also important an we have fallen far short of obtaining enough votes for many, many years.

Again, I appreciate your comments.
Dennisg7

LOL that will be easy to pass, just have the ballot measure state that each owner will get their fair share of the money from the land sale, but only if they vote. If you get $50K and have 50 people vote out of 100, then only those 50 get $1000. We actually did this when the city wanted an easemetn and it passed very easily. We mailed out 2 post card reminders that said if you don't vote you dont' get the money.

now if you want to just keep the money so the board can fund some pet project then no ones gonna give a crap.

Interesting this quandary should come up at this time.

We are a community of 100 households. In past years we have had an active HOA, including regular monthly meetings, published financials, meeting minutes, a newsletter, active enforcement of our covenants, and a couple of major special events each year.

The new Board has dropped ALL of those items and there is little to no conversation about "that HOA that we used to have. It doesn't exist any longer."

Well it does exist and now comes a proposal from the HOA Board to water down our covenants (because they haven't enforced them in years). The first round of electronic ballots (our Bylaws just say "Vote", it doesn't say how) got way less than a quorum. The second round did a little better, but still not greater than the 50% positive votes required to implement the new covenants. We are now on our third vote.

What happened? The HOA became an afterthought to most residents. There was no activity from the Board, no communication, nothing. Just silence for years. And now we are expected all of sudden to care about a vote? The community was "lost" to the Board because they didn't show any interest in the community. In the past our annual meetings had dozens of residents attend, were held in a formal setting (as opposed to someone's living room), we had communication and activities and acted like a community. That's what it takes. Complete engagement, not just when it suits the Board to reach out to the residents, who now have very little interest.

Electronic voting has been fine. I wonder how many rounds are "allowed' (our Bylaws don't address it) and if there is a record of the final tally which becomes part of our permanent files.

The reason people don’t vote for CC&R revisions is because people fear change.

Tim B4

First, apologies for taking so long to tell you that i appreciate your making me aware of the ballot requirements for votes to be "legal".

Our Board...mostly the President, who for some reason, wanted to allow trash cans at liberty, basketball hoops at liberty, and some language about parking "trailers" (not defined) behind homes...kept repeating the on-line vote until he had his majority.

The whole thing was a major cluster F, with the president extending the vote three times in order to get the number of votes necessary for passage. He sent an email notifying the community that the amendments were accepted, and the covenants on file with the local government, had been amended as such.

So, if i understand your publishing of the law, and my further investigation, there are a number illegalities in the process:

The Votes were taken on-line, extended on two occasions consecutively, and a third time about three weeks after the second vote did not meet the 50% threshold of affirmative votes. I presume the president was out calling people and getting them to vote after each successive failure. There is no documentation of the results from any of the "votes", and none from the final (cumulative from the three votes) vote. Keeping it all private seems to smell, even it can be considered legal--which I don't think it is.

It turns out our Secretary resigned quietly some months ago, long before the voting took place. That partly explains why we have had no board minutes nor newsletters for many months--more than a year in the case of the newsletter. Seems to me that my reading of the law says that a President and a Secretary must be present/active for a corporation to exist, and therefore conduct the business of the association, of which ours is a corporation. The Tennessee records still indicate that the Secretary and the Treasurer (more on the in a minute) are still officers of the corporation. So, with no secretary, can the business of the Board, i.e. the votes, be legal and enforceable?

Now comes the issue of the Treasurer, whose day to day activities were farmed out to an external company who is supposed to collect our due and prepare financial statements. Let's just say that their implementation was a disaster. And there have been no financials published since the annual meeting back in February. The Treasurer sold his house and left the neighborhood, so we have no treasurer, but an external service supposedly doing the work of the Treasurer.

And now we find out that after running the HOA into the ground and weakening the community be defaulting on just about every function, the president has his house for sale--on Facebook marketplace (and with a FSBO sign in his front yard) of all things.

The, so Secretary is in hiding, the Treasurer has left the neighborhood, and The President wants to leave.

It really stinks, and it shows in the community. We are coming up on the "voting" season when we elect Board replacements and fill those slots for people whose term has expired. They may run again, but with the three major functions presumably empty, it should be an interesting voting season. We vote in January and install at the annual in February. I can't step forward for a reason, and it remains to see who will, if anyone, take the reins.

I saw this coming, but i never imagined that things could deteriorate from a healthy vibrant HOA and Community to an everyman for themselves bunch of house/residents.

ValK2,

Thanks for the response.

Sorry to hear what you are going through with your Association.

I think it's going to require leg work and the gathering of enough volunteers to set your association back on the right course.
Otherwise, you may want to think of moving.