Election by Ballots-Florida

Are you a Condominium Association or a Home Owners Association?

Ben,

1) Would it be consistent with our Bylaws, as stated above, to send out ballots ahead of time to be turned into the Secretary prior to the Meeting or should all written ballots have to be done at the meeting.

2) Our Bylaws also state that proxies may be used at all meetings of the members. Would the use of a proxy still be appropriate even though a ballot had been provided to all members ahead of time?

3) Would you consider the candidate with proxies a valid member of the Board if the proxies were not turned in?

#1 Sure you can send out ballots ahead of time. They are called absentee ballots.
#2 You can't use both, one or the other. The proxy would have to be assigned (in my opinion) to vote for a specific candidate. All ballots, proxies must be handled in a standard manner, look in up in Roberts or use some other method that insures confidentiality and verification and counting oversight.
#3 Absolutely not, what ever your rules are must be followed and directions for handling all voting procedures should be written. How can you consider proxies or anything else if you can't verify the vote. The person holding the proxies must turn them in at voting time and there has to be a system to verify them. If you have no Rules the Board can resolve to adopt an acceptable reference such as Robert's Rules of Order.
Voting by a show of hands for elections or just about anything else demonstrates a Board in trouble. Sad to say it happens all the time, why ignore tried and true methods to play big shot and crowd pleaser.

Ben,
The only solid foundation any association has is their documents. Many of these are suspect, but you must start there and stay there.If you are looking for complications and problems, start mucking around and ignoring your documents, when you do this you do great harm to the association, something all of us signed our name and promised to protect. Documents are designed to be amended not ignored.