Mail-in vote recount

[John Cummings]

Sorry in advance for a question that has had similar questions asked before. I've read through the threads and am still unclear.

This year due to covid-19 we conducted a mail in vote, tallied the votes and announced the results and adjourned the vote counting meeting.  There was an article that was announced as "failed" to get the required 2/3 vote and after closer inspection it was discovered to have lost by 14 votes or really 7 votes that could have been counted incorrectly. 

Is it too late to call for a recount after the vote counting session has adjourned or do we still have until the next association meeting as I am seeing in some of the threads. 

I guess the second part of the question is that how likely out of 400 votes cast would it be to have 7 errors?  My thoughts are is that is could be possible by maybe unlikely.

Thanks

John Cummings

[Atul Kapur]

Is the only reason that you are thinking of a recount is because the results were close to a 2/3 vote?

If that is the case, then, "A recount may be ordered by the voting body, by a majority vote, at the same session at which the voting result was announced, or at the next regular session if that
session is held within a quarterly time interval (see 9:7). A recount may also be ordered at a special session properly called for that purpose, if held within a quarterly time interval of the session at which the voting result was announced and before the next regular session."
RONR (12th ed.) 45:41

So, if your next meeting is within a quarterly time interval (i.e., on or before Dec 31 if the announcement meeting was held in September), then a recount may be ordered at that meeting.

This, of course, assumes that the mail-in vote and "vote counting meeting" were both authorized by your rules.

[John Cummings]

7 minutes ago, Atul Kapur said:

 

This, of course, assumes that the mail-in vote and "vote counting meeting" were both authorized by your rules.

The mail-in vote and voting meeting are another subject all together.  The NH Condo act allows mail-in voting as long as long our by-laws don't prevent mail-in voting and they don't.  Our association attorney agreed. But there has been a lot of lively debate on that. I guess for the purpose of my question out association attorney is correct.  Ironically the vote in question is to allow mail-in voting for the association.

So, sounds like a recount can be called, but it has to be done at a meeting of the association and that meeting has to occur within a quarter time interval from the voting meeting. Also a majority vote at the next meeting is required to approve the recount.  We do have a meeting next month, so I guess that would be the next opportunity to request a recount.

How likely is it that we had 7 tabulation errors?  We had 14 voting articles and 400 ballots, so we had 5600 tabulations.  Doesn't seem too far fetched to have 7 errors, does it? 

Thanks for the response!

 

John

 

[Atul Kapur]

The relevant measure is not 7 out of 5600. It's 7 errors in the counting of the 400 votes on that particular question. That's a 1.75% error rate, which does seem high to me on a simple Yes/No question. And, all the errors would have to be in the same direction to affect the result, making it even more unlikely.

I was going to go on at length about why that would be a remarkably high error rate, but didn't because there's a more fundamental question: Why does a recount matter? (aka "So What?")

You've told us that "The NH Condo act allows mail-in voting as long as long our by-laws don't prevent mail-in voting and they don't.  Our association attorney agreed" and that the vote in question is regarding, "Ironically the vote in question is to allow mail-in voting for the association."

As far as I understand it, the result is the same either way.

If adopted, your bylaws/articles will explicitly allow mail-in voting.
If defeated, your bylaws/articles remain silent and NH Condo Act allows mail-in voting.

Either way, the practical result is the same.

Edited September 20, 2020 at 12:25 AM by Atul Kapur

[John Cummings]

Thanks for the response,

Mail-in voting is allowed by the NH Condo Act, but our standard is to have an in-person annual meeting in which our voting takes place.   This years mail-in vote was a Covid-19 exception and next year assuming we are back to normal times we will go back to the in-person meeting.  The voting article was to make mail-in voting the new standard in our by-laws replacing the by-law on the in-person meeting.  After reviewing my math it would need a full 14 votes to shift and that won't happen - oh well.

The issue with the in-person meeting is that the association is a summer camp/residency and the meeting is held at the very end of the season when most of the owners have already returned to their homes.   The owners are dispersed up and down the east coast and can't attend the meeting to vote.  So, we have an annual meeting where only 150 out of the 456 owners attend, many of these 150 are holding multiple votes via proxy and we do not have a good way to manage the proxy's.

I guess the obvious question to me is, why not change the meeting date so that more can attend.  Well, that takes a 2/3 vote at the association meeting and the 150 that attend that meeting would never vote for that as they would lose their voting advantage.  This years mail-in vote was probably the only chance we will have to make a change in our voting system as each owner had one and only one vote. 

 

Thanks again

John