ANNUAL ELECTION

We are a 5 member Board located in Illinois. Currently 3 positions are open, two are elected members and one individual installed this past February. Of these 3 individuals, only one member submitted their candidate profile, the second individual simply forgot to mail in their form and the third individual (installed) didn't submit their candidate profile form. I've been told in the past these forms are to be submitted in order to allow the membership to vote for whomever is included on proxy form. I am just looking for confirmation of: if the installed board member would still be on the board regardless if quorum is met or not without a candidate profile form. Our governing documents are silent on this. Thanks in advance for your input. Our annual election is this Thursday, 8/28/2025. Apologize for this eleventh hour request. -Reneé

Your meeting is on Thursday – don’t know why you’d wait until today to bring this up, but since you did…

You say person #3 was “installed” in February – does that mean the person was newly elected and has begun serving his/her term or was he/she appointed to close out the term of someone who left? If it’s the latter, that person serves until the term is up – he/she hasn’t turned in a profile, so why don’t you just ask them what their intentions are?

Since we’ve had a few discussions on proxies and ballots lately, are we talking about proxy, as in someone appoints someone else to attend the meeting to vote in his/her behalf OR a ballot listing various candidates, you vote from whoever, turn it in and the ballots are counted (preferably in front of everyone during the meeting?) I ask because there’s been a bit of confusion as to the differences.

In this case, making quorum is far more important – if you don’t have enough people to meet or exceed that number, you can’t have a meeting or an election, and so any incumbents would continue to serve until they step down, get voted out or recalled. I’m pretty sure not turning in a candidate profile or being late with one trumps making quorum and your documents don’t address this anyway.

At this point, it would be easier to postpone the meeting so you can verify who wants to do what and send out the proxy/ballot with accurate information OR tell people board elections will be held live during the meeting and nominations will be taken from the floor for one position. Each candidate can make a brief presentation as to why he/she wants the position - that will be fair to anyone who steps up to run. If a homeowner can't show up, they can use the proxy to appoint someone to show up and vote on their behalf.