Membership motion

[Guest ACR]

Our HOA has an annual election of expiring terms for our Board members.  The ballots issued have candidate voting at top and proxy at bottom.  Header of ballot states to complete one or the other.  Proxy portion states it will be used for motions made on the floor.  Some members completed both.  Also campaigning was done to membership that solicitated votes with top section marked and members signed and submitted.  At the meeting the management company announced they would invalidate these types of completed ballots. A member made the motion to include these ballots and it was seconded.  The board stated the motion could not be brought forth since it was not on the agenda.  How can they disallow membership motion at the annual membership meeting?

[Gary Novosielski]

If the rules in RONR apply, the general membership decides all questions regarding the validity of ballots or any other questions affecting the election--not the Management Company.  There is nothing wrong with campaigning, but ballots other than those created by the organization may be rejected depending on your individual rules.  Again, the membership decides. 

Proxy voting is prohibited by RONR, so any proxies would be governed by your bylaws or state HOA regulations.  Whether a ballot should be discarded if both sections are filled out cannot therefore, be answered under the rules of RONR.   In general, a ballot should be considered valid if the intent of the voter can be discerned.  If both sections are filled out, but it can be determined whether the ballot was cast as a proxy or a live ballot, that's an argument in favor of counting it.  As long as both sections are not counted, giving the voter two votes, it's not a serious breach, but again, the membership decides.

If a member makes a motion at a membership meeting, the board is not in session, or even present per se,  except as individual general members, so it has no authority to reject anything.  Motions incidental to the election cannot be expected to be on the agenda since it is impossible to say in advance whether, or when, they might be required.  The fact that the election or matters incidental to the election are on the agenda, is sufficient.

How "they" can do it is by just doing it, and having, apparently, no members raise a point of order.  If ya snooze, ya lose.  Wel, actually,  if all but one snooze there is still hope. Will there be another membership meeting at or prior to the time of the election?

Finally, who is counting the votes, and have they been instructed that any ambiguities about how a given ballot should be counted must be brought to the membership?

Pay attention to the disclaimers in my signature. 👇

Edited September 25, 2022 at 08:08 PM by Gary Novosielski

[Richard Brown]

I am not able to figure out exactly what the situation is from the information in the original post. A more detailed explanation would be very helpful. I also suspect that state laws dealing with homeowner associations are a factor and may have something to do with the alleged notice requirement  it all sounds very strange and not like annual meetings are normally conducted.