Voting for Board and Voting Members
Dennis,
How do most HOA’s conduct the voting process for board members and neighborhood voting members. It has recently come to our attention that our process does not appear to be tightly controlled and too easily influenced and determined by the voting members.
Our votes are mailed to our mgmt company. Once the votes are received, they are opened, tabulated, but not stored in a locked area. Any board member can enter the managment company’s office where the votes are stored and flip through them to see who has the most votes. This can happen throughout the entire voting period.
When voting for board members, our neighborhoods generally have a very poor participation rate less than 30%. Our CC&R’s allow each neighborhhood’s voting member to vote the votes that have not been submitted by the reseidents. That means the voting meber could be voting 70% – 80% of the neighborhood’s votes. In addition, the voting member can vote these votes in any way that he/she wants. He/she doesn’t have to vote in the same ratio’s as those votes that were submitted. From my perspective, the whole process is a farce. We continue to have the incumbant board re-elected year after year. People that want to be on the boardnever seem to gain entry due to our process. Also, do most HOA’s have term limits on board members and/or the positions they hold on the board (treasurer, secretary, president, etc.)
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DPK
Are you from the Prescott community that uses delegate voting? If so that process clearly violates Arizona law prohibiting the use of voting “pursuant to a proxy”. A case challenging your associations process is curriently at the Superior court. My top priority bill for this session will both specifically prohibit the use of delegates and provide for a consistent voting process to protect the secrecy and integrity of the voting system. This bill will be introduced by Senator Kavanagh in the next few days. It was approved for introduction last night.
Dennis
After our community votes, the ballots are available for any owner to inspect, so after the voting it is useful for analyzing how “block” or “clique” voting has swung or overwhelmed the general vote. A tactic employed to lock in a group of members year over year and keeping new blood out. By being able to inspect the votes after the fact, it is easy to see what groups or areas would need to be engaged and supported in voting so new blood can find it’s way past the minority using the low turnout to their advantage. I fully support transparent ballot availability after an election. Dennis, what do you think?
The integrity of elections and the voting process has always been my top priority for all of these communities and is protected by my Bill SB-1294 this session. This bill was the culmination of hundreds of hours of drafting and negotiation with all the stakeholders over 7 months and is my top priority legislation. I’ need any and every homeowner in this state to read this bill carefully and support its passage thru the legislature.
Dennis
Thank you. I scanned the last two Legislative email updates and don’t see that particular bill mentioned. Please what is the bill number?
SB-1294