Voting by e-mail

Our founding doc's need to be amended and voted on by the entire membership ,as most HO's are weekenders and part-timers ,only 3 full time residents, the Board has considered voting by e-mail in order to eliminate waiting 12 mos, for the annual meeting or calling a special meeting. Do any HOA's have an e-mail voting policy and if so how does it work and what type of timeline is in place.i.e. 10 day notice of vote , 7 days to vote, how long to announce the results?

Jeff,
Our CC&R's aren't specific and our bylaws make a slight mention of using electronic means. For 2007 we had an e-mail board member election and it went pretty well I thought. We had only 6 out of 76 not participate! But of course, there was someone who decided to complain and say it wasn't confidential enough. We had allowed for those who didn't want to email vote to vote by mail or ballot on the day of the meeting, but of course someone still complained. For 2008 we did mail in ballots only, and of course someone still complained. (the same someone).
As far as notice goes, we gave several months of notice by email. Just an informal note. Then we sent a more formal e-mail with the deadline date of 30 days. (Texas law requires not less than 10 or more than 60 day notice). With email, you could announce the vote on the day after the deadline to receive the votes, but we usually wait until the meeting. Our deadline is usually right before the meeting.
We give our members a choice to receive e-mail or snail mail and only 2 choose to use snail mail.
In case you need it, the place I found that authorizes voting by email in Texas is the Texas Business Organizations Code Title 2, Chapter 22, Section 22.160 (d) : "If authorized by the certificate of formation or bylaws of the corporation, a member vote on any matter may be conducted by mail, by facsimile transmission, by electronic message, or by any combination of those methods."
We don't really have a policy for email voting. It is something we tried once and may try again in the future. I had read that there was supposed to be some other specific updates to Texas law regarding email voting and other email correspondence due to come out in February 2009, but I haven't been able to locate anything. We were waiting to see what came out before proposing a change to our bylaws.
Good Luck!

Jeff,

I think it would be very unwise to amend the bylaws to only allow email voting. Other forms of voting must also be allowed. All the members may not always have access to email. IMO, the use of absentee ballots is the best method as they can also be used for quorum purposes.

Jeff,
What I've read in many of the HOA sites is that it is very tempting in this age of e-mail to conduct all our business in this venue, but it is not recommended. Our CC&R's cannot be amended without a written vote, our Bylaws just need the quorum at a meeting. My general rule of thumb in this electronic age is conduct all final business in person.

Dorothy