Texas Law Prohibiting Pay for Vot?

I know you’ll think I’m kidding, but I wonder: is there any law or penalty against paying a person $10 to vote me onto the HOA Board. I haven’t found anything on point.

Bill

I *did* see that. However, I’m not certain if it applies to an HOA (which is a private corporation).

Bill

This federal law does not apply to HOAs. Congress wrote this law under the authority of Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution and/or other parts of the Constitution yada. These sections pertain to the regulation of national elections.

Can a candidate for a HOA board buy votes and violate no city, state or federal law?

It depends on the state. Examples:

Florida's HOA and COA statutes prohibit vote buying.

So far I see no such prohibition in Texas's HOA, COA and nonprofit corp statutes. Same for California.

As BillD16 suggested, and where HOA/COA vote buying is allowed, I expect it is because of the nature of corporations. For starters, see discussion at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_of_shareholder_votes

Thanks ElleN and Tim!

I am not seriously considering doing this. And if I was, I’d be sure to rope in a good attorney first. But for random reasons I was thinking about it, and it struck me just how cheap it would be to do this in my neighborhood (~600 homes, usually less than 250 votes per election). For instance: “vote for me and get $10 if I win!”{1} If I lose - oh well. If I win, it costs maybe around $2000. Which is astonishingly cheap given the amounts of money that the Board gets to play with each year{2}. There probably *should* be a law against it.

Would $10 be enough? I don’t know. It’s interesting to speculate on a bidding war starting up amongst the candidates.

Is it ethically questionable? On initial consideration, I thought “yeah, that’s sleazy.” But upon further thought: I’m not so certain. HOA Boards can and do lots of things that are “questionable”. The Wikipedia article ElleN cited has some subtle and interesting thoughts on how it could make sense in a corporate environment. Additionally: in a political election, it’s obvious that buying votes is a no-no. Yet US election campaigns are constantly begging for money: “your $10 contribution could be all it takes for a win!” No, they’re not handing out money at the polls - but I’ve never really understood how election funding can influence a vote: advertising? How many ads does a person need to be exposed to to make them get out and vote for {candidate}? Are we all puppets? Or is it something like Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” but way more spooky? In theory I could spend thousands of dollars on advertising and flyers etc to try to get a seat on the Board. It might seem insane - but I’m not sure many would question the ethics of it.

{1} and there are countless variations: “I give you $1 up front, plus $10 when I win”. This would work well as a mail campaign - if you’ve ever received mail from the Arbitron people asking you to fill out one of their Radio Ratings Diaries, you can likely attest to the power of a crisp new $1 bill folded into a letter. PSYCH 100 stuff.

{2} our Social Committee budget for 2026 is $15,000.

I’m your yanky doodle dandy in a gold Rolls Royce,

Bill

The sad part is $10 might be all it takes to get the deed done.

ElleN wrote:
> I say: Good thread. In my several years posting here, I do not think I have ever seen this come up. Maybe this thread will start a trend?

Thank you. I know that I sometimes ask some off-the-wall questions here. They don't always concern immediate, practical matters, but I wonder about 'things'. I sincerely hope that I'm never wasting people's time.

Oh - I thought of a less-than-ethical but cost-efficient way to exploit the $$$->Vote concept: prepare a bunch of envelopes in the name of {competitor} offering $10 (or whatever) for their vote, and distribute them about the neighborhood. If there is sufficient outcry, they won't win - but voters will be staring daggers at the competition.

Bill