How to break a tie vote for election of new member of BOD

[Guest Ron S]

We just had an election of new members of the BOD in a POA.  It was a ballot type vote by property owners at large.  There were three seats to be filled, of which two were incumbent members who got re-elected with most votes.  The last seat was a tie vote between two new individuals running for the same seat.  We had 56 proxy votes sent in for the current BOD to use as necessary.  Prior to the election cut off, the BOD choose to distribute the proxy votes evenly among the four applicants which did not break the tie.  Our By-laws do not state how to deal with a tie vote and this is the first in our history that we know of that we have to deal with this.  Any suggestions?

[Josh Martin]

1 minute ago, Guest Ron S said:

We just had an election of new members of the BOD in a POA.  It was a ballot type vote by property owners at large.  There were three seats to be filled, of which two were incumbent members who got re-elected with most votes.  The last seat was a tie vote between two new individuals running for the same seat.  We had 56 proxy votes sent in for the current BOD to use as necessary.  Prior to the election cut off, the BOD choose to distribute the proxy votes evenly among the four applicants which did not break the tie.  Our By-laws do not state how to deal with a tie vote and this is the first in our history that we know of that we have to deal with this.  Any suggestions?

Under the rules in RONR, another vote would be taken for the last seat.

[Weldon Merritt]

3 minutes ago, Guest Ron S said:

Any suggestions?

Vote again.

[Guest Puzzling]

1 hour ago, Guest Ron S said:

We just had an election of new members of the BOD in a POA.  It was a ballot type vote by property owners at large.  There were three seats to be filled, of which two were incumbent members who got re-elected with most votes.  The last seat was a tie vote between two new individuals running for the same seat.  We had 56 proxy votes sent in for the current BOD to use as necessary.  Prior to the election cut off, the BOD choose to distribute the proxy votes evenly among the four applicants which did not break the tie.  Our By-laws do not state how to deal with a tie vote and this is the first in our history that we know of that we have to deal with this.  Any suggestions?

It looks like the election was done by a plurality method. (The 3 candidates with the highest number of votes are elected, in this case the 3rd and 4th candidate had the same number of votes)

  

This is not a method that RONR approves off.

Under RONR each boardmember needs the support of a majority vote of the members.

Just having more votes than every other candidate is not enough.

Please check what your bylaws have to say on how elections are done or not.

 

 

[Richard Brown]

1 hour ago, Guest Puzzling said:

It looks like the election was done by a plurality method.

It’s possible the election was by plurality vote, but we don’t know that for a fact. The original poster does not say that and does not give us enough information to make that determination.

1 hour ago, Guest Puzzling said:

This is not a method that RONR approves off.

It’s not the method RONR recommends, but it is a permissible method if it is what the bylaws provide for.

Regardless, assuming the election complies with the bylaws, the solution is to vote again on the third seat.