Smart Board & Property Manager Legal Guide: E-Voting for Florida Community Associations

Okay, the agenda. Thank you, Michelle. Well, the introduction, Tannenbaum, Lemole & Hill is a community association law firm. We provide full services to condominiums, and homeowner associations ranging from construction defect, turnover, litigation work to assessment collections, general counsel, and all that comes with that. As I'd like to put it frequently, we basically offer everything but tax advice, and workers compensation. Other than that, we can pretty much advise your community associations, and help you with the issues that come up. So, we're going to be going through obviously the electronic voting options that are statutory by the way. And the first steps is going to have to be per these statutes of board resolution. We're going to be explaining that, and the statutory requirements that not only come in with that resolution, but with the service providers, and what they have to provide, which is, again, where GetQuorum is going to step in, and also tell us how their services work, and what they offer.

So, before we get going though, I want to go ahead, and say that there's a lot of ways you could potentially e-vote in this modern world. There's Survey Monkey, and other things that can be used, but that's not what this is at all. This is not a polling system. This is not a, just pick something from the internet system. The statutes are very specific about having to have a qualified e-voting vendor who has a system that follows the requirements of the applicable act, whether it's a condominium association, the Condominium Act, a homeowner association for the Homeowner Association Act. And while that may be frustrating to some folks who'd rather do some more shopping around, the reality is, it makes sure that procedural errors are avoided, because noticing meetings, and following procedures for meetings in the Condominium Homeowner Association acts are strict statutes that have to be followed. The bylaws of Homeowner Association also have to be followed to the extent that they may provide more detail, or additional requirements than required the Homeowner Association Act. So, having vendors who understand community associations is absolutely vital to making sure you have a solid system.

So, that's something we're going to be going through again in detail, explaining how there's a procedure that must be followed by the board, and what the vendors must do on their end per the statutes. And it's also important to keep in mind that these services are not just for your annual election, because people might think, "Well, we don't usually get enough people to even run. Why would we want to do this?" These services are our convenience for if you need any sort of membership involvement, and vote if you want to make amendments, if you have excess surplus you want to roll over at the end of the year, these services provide those opportunities to do this via electronic voting. And the ease of use is really beneficial. You don't have to worry about something being lost in the mail, or the poor folks that live in Canada that seem to get their mail about a month after it's sent out of Florida.

You don't have any of those burdens. You also don't have the issue of someone needing to fill out a piece of paper, and maybe ran out of stamps, because they don't use them a lot anymore. And having to get one, and get something out in the mail, it makes it very easy. Being part of the system means you will get your electronic notices, which you can respond to electronically, and that of course increases owner participation. It's just common sense. You make something easier for people, you make it more timely that they get the information, they're more likely to participate, and be part of your community, which is ultimately an enormous service in terms of making sure that people are notified, and aware of what's happening, and have the opportunity to voice their opinions, and vote accordingly. So, with that being said, I'm going to turn this over to Jennifer Hicks for the next part of the presentation.

Jennifer Hicks, Esq.:

Thank you. I think Michelle... Thank you, Michelle. So, how do you start using electronic voting? The first step is going to be doing a board resolution. These resolutions are required by statute, as Cindy was saying, it's going to be discussed, and voted on at a board meeting, but that board meeting requires 14 days notice at least to your membership. So, this isn't one that classifies under your 48 hours, or three day notice whatever your documents require. The Florida statutes for both HOAs, and condos require this meeting to have 14 days notice. Your owners who would like to vote electronically. Now what that means is even if you go to e-voting, your owners are not required to use e-voting. It just becomes an availability to them, and they must consent to do so in writing. Now that now can be thank you to the administrative code by email.

So, if you get an email that is sufficient, and the consent is valid until the owner notifies the board that they no longer want to use electronic voting. Your electronic votes are going to be limited to the issues specifically identified in the electronic voting notice. Now does that mean you can't use it for what Cindy was saying? No, you can use it for any vote. It just has to be prepared beforehand. You're not going to be using it to vote on something that came up at the meeting that was not on the agenda, or on the notice. And each association, condo, or HOA that is implementing an e-voting policy, or procedure must comply with the correct statute. And that's going to be 718.128 for the condominiums, and 720.317 for HOAs.

Next slide, please. Thank you. So, the first step, as we said is your resolution. Your resolution is going to provide that owners will receive notice of opportunity to vote electronic through the online system. It's going to establish their procedures, and deadlines for the owners to provide their written consent. So, how many days before the vote do you have to have that consent? And then it's also going to establish reasonable procedures, and deadlines for owners to opt out of voting. So, say someone doesn't like using the online voting system for whatever reason, they have the right to remain using paper, or go back to using paper. Your resolution does not have to select your online voting system. It's just the start of the process, and saying you're going to try, and use one. Next slide. I think we're moving to Jim who is going to help us decide what we need to have in our systems.

James "Jim" Turffs, Esq.:

Thanks, Jen. Yeah, I'm briefly going to talk about the statutes, and I'm going to do this sort of with the intent of showing you how technically specific the statutes are, and as a manner as to why getting a qualified vendor in place can help you avoid having to deal with each of these things yourself. The vendors are quite adapted, and very familiar with these statutory requirements, these technical requirements, the notice requirements. So, when you hire a company like that, they can come in, and really eliminate a lot of risk of screwing up any of the technical details, the notice requirements, they can walk you through every step of the way. And so it's really going to make your life a lot easier. But to start with, I'm going to talk about the provisions of the statutes that are the same for both condos, and HOAs.

By, and large, the statutes are almost identical. There's just a few little niche things for HOAs, because the condo voting system is set up pretty statutorily. The statutes tell condos pretty much this is how you're going to vote. HOAs are always the odd man out. They come out, and say, "Well, look at your governing documents." And your governing documents can sometimes even implement condo style voting. They can be pretty wacky. So, HOAs have to focus a lot more on their governing documents, this is usually the case, but the first part of the statutes that's common to both 718, and 720 starts with what the e-voting system has to offer each owner. So, for example, when you're setting up your e-voting, your resolution has been passed, your community has voted to implement e-voting. You got that system set up, you need to have an e-voting system that first allows the member to authenticate their own identity with the system.

This makes sure that the person voting is actually a member. It's not just somebody randomly stumbled onto your website. It helps you verify your voting, and your receipt saying member of lot whatever who voted here, we can authenticate who's actually voting in our elections, or voting on these issues. The second situation, that technical requirement for the system is that it has to provide at least a method to confirm that each member's voting device, whether that's their laptop, cell phone, tablet, whatever device they're using to access your e-voting portal actually works. It is actually compliant, and works with the e-voting system. A lot of older computers that may not have the ability to communicate, so they want to make sure that an owner has at least 14 days notice to try to get in, and test that system. And if for whatever reason they're not able to access the e-voting system, and verify that they can communicate properly with it, they can either go to the board, and seek technical assistance, or if they need to, they can opt out of electronic voting in order to get back on the paper ballot. Next slide, please.

So, in addition to allowing the members to verify themselves, and authenticate, and do these system checks, and requirements, the system itself has to have certain safety features, and other technical requirements to ensure that it's doing its job, and still maintaining the integrity of the election. So, again, we authenticate the owner's identity. If you're collecting proxies to establish a quorum, you need to know which lots are there, who's there for the lots sort of thing. You can use the e-voting system to establish a quorum. And to do that, you need to be able to identify every member who's present electronically as well as who's in person. When you're actually conducting an e-vote. The electronic voting system also has to have a method of validating each vote as it goes from the user's device to the tally system. So, this makes sure that it's not altered in transit that somebody has, hasn't intercepted a vote.

There's a security requirement basically that says, "Hey, we need to make sure the ballots maintain their integrity", and it makes sense. You certainly wouldn't want somebody intercepting your paper ballots, and trying to change them in course. So, they're trying to make e-voting very similar to that paper system, just more technologically savvy about it. The voting system has to provide each voting member with a receipt that their vote has been cast, and what their vote says. Again, for associations, there are occasionally we have members who come to us, and say, "We're not sure our board is doing this right? We think they might be hiding votes. We're not counting votes." Well, with electronic voting, you sort of eliminate that risk altogether. And I mean, in my experience, I haven't really ever seen that happen, but there are people who think it. So, when you have an electronic voting system in place that says your vote was sent to the system, this is who you voted for, great.

Then you've already eliminated that whole risk altogether. And something that Frank may talk about once we turn over to him at later part of the session is all of this is still subject to division election monitoring. If at any point you need to, there's any question of the integrity of your voting system, even if it's administered by an outside vendor like GetQuorum, or somebody like that. You can still call in an election monitor from the DVPR to verify that everything is above board. So, there's a lot of safety that you can get through e-voting, and in a lot of ways it's actually more reliable, and more trustworthy than going through a paper ballot system. Now, the fourth requirement up there is to maintain the ballots after they've been cast, so that if there is a challenge to the election, and we know there's a statutory process for that, if anybody thinks an election was conducted improperly for any reason, they can go to the DVPR, they can challenge that.

So, the electronic voting system, just like a paper voting system, has to keep your ballots available for inspection afterward. There also to some degree, and depending on which association you're in, they are also official records. So, you need to be able to maintain those. And again, inspection, and review process, they can be recounts if necessary. It's very similar, but just safer than paper voting. And again, it eliminates a lot of risk for you. When you have an outside vendor like GetQuorum come in, and establish these systems. These are companies that have worked through it. They know that their systems are already compliant with this, and it really, it's a streamlined process. It's pretty quick, and again, provides additional safety, cuts down on costs, all that great stuff just by hiring in a vendor to establish the system. Otherwise owners voting electronically are counted, present for the purposes of establishing a quorum.

So, again, when you log into the e-voting system, when you're attending, you're voting that way, you're automatically counted basically as a proxy as being present for the purposes of a quorum. And a point that also I think we need to emphasize, because so many associations think that e-voting is only for your elections. You can use it only for your elections probably unless you're a condo. We'll talk about that in a minute. But it can be used for anything that a member votes on. And I think Jen touched on that again at the beginning, but it's important to drive home. If you're looking to amend your governing documents, you can vote on that electronically. If you need to have a budget vote, you can do that electronically, and it saves you a lot of time, a lot of effort by doing it that way. And of course, you deal with owners who are out of state, owners who are just, frankly. Lazy to come in, and vote.

It's a lot easier to vote through your computer in your own living room than it is to go to the clubhouse, or go to wherever you're meeting all things that are addressed, and making your life easier through voting. Next slide, please. So, that's the general statutes that apply to everybody. Now, let's talk for a second about HOAs, again, HOAs the odd man out. Your voting process can be established more by your governing documents than the statute. So, the chapter seven 20 portion on e-voting addresses some of those concerns specifically to compensate for that difference. [inaudible 00:15:22] So, the first portion that is deal with that is exclusive to is that the association must provide each owner with a method for e-voting that is consistent with the election, and voting procedures in the bylaws. And again, in HOAs bylaws may drastically shape how e-voting works, or voting in general works. So, if you have a secret ballot system, your e-voting system still needs to maintain that secret ballot option. Just implementing, there's not a one size fits all e-voting system. They're going to be tailored for your association, especially if it's an HOA.

Again, bigger vendors such as GetQuorum, and other companies like that are going to have the ability to tailor their voting systems to address your specific needs, and address the provisions of your bylaws, your special requirements that are unique to your association. The second portion that the statutes cut out to deal with separately for is that if you're required to use secret ballots for your election, the e-voting system has to be sort of similar to the condo one, where it secures, where it can strip away all of that information. It can separate the identifying information from the vote, so that you can still maintain that secrecy while still maintaining that owner information to know who voted for what. You can still verify who was there, and who was present, who was voting, but it strips away the balance so that you still maintain that secrecy.

You can't say lot 47 voted for that director. You just know that a vote was cast, so maintains that anonymity for the ballot. If secret ballots are not required, you don't pay attention to that section. If your bylaws don't require secret ballots for your elections, then hey, you don't have to worry about that as far as implementing your e-voting system. So, it's a contingent statute in there just for HOAs who do, next slide, please. So, condos have a few more unique differences, because again, they're so static. The condo voting process, whether, again, mostly for elections is going to be driven primarily by the statutes. Condos don't have that same leeway to go into their governing documents, and drastically change their voting procedures. The statute says, "This is how you do it, this is how you're going to do it."

You have some minor options, but by, and large, you're doing what the statutes tell you. So, specifically to help with that, and to tailor the condo statutes to address those specific requirements, we have these four unique characteristics of chapter 718. For example, a condo association must provide each owner with a method to transmit an electronic ballot to the online voting system that ensures the secrecy, and integrity of each ballot. Again, condos require secrecy, the secret ballots, especially in elections. So, when you're using the voting system, that ability to maintain that level of secrecy, and again, we talked about it at the common part of the statute, too, that the ballots remain unchanged, and that there's security there. That's all really integral to the condo type system of e-voting. You need to make sure that secrecy is there, that it's safe, it's secure, and you're not putting your owners in a position where they can still be tied to any specific vote that they cast.

A condo association must use an online voting system that for elections at least, and just talking about elections, remember, we can vote on anything. But for elections in condos, the system has to be able to permanently separate the authentication, or identifying information from the ballot rendering impossible to tie specific ballot to that owner. Frankly, I'm not sure how many elections would result in people being persecuted for voting for any particular candidate, but they certainly exist. Some of these elections can get pretty hostile. If you've been doing this as a director, or especially a cam long enough, you've certainly seen some owners get very upset with election outcomes. So, again, complying with the statute, maintaining that secrecy very important. A substantive vote of the owners may not be taken on any issue other than the issue specifically identified in the vote. Jen touched on that again earlier, very briefly. This is just to say that coming into an e-voting situation, if you're attending a meeting in person, or by electronic presence, and you're voting on those issues, they have to be prepared in advance.

There's no off the cuff voting that's going to happen at an e-voting scenario. So, you need to make sure that anything is going to be addressed is on that e-voting slate for that meeting. Otherwise, you'll have to have, if something comes up where you determine that another votable issue has arisen, you'll need to schedule that for another meeting, another vote. But again, that's so much easier when you're using electronic voting, especially if your owners have signed up for e-notices, you can set all that sort of stuff. Once they've opted into that program, you're saving money on postage, you're cutting down on mistakes that can happen with posting notices. You've got a vendor who's going to make sure you're posting your notices timely. This whole thing is going to be streamlined for you, and it's really going to make your life a lot easier. And again, you just have to make sure that if you're voting on something, it's on the agenda, and it's prepared for the meeting at which the vote is to be called.

And finally, for condos, if a board authorizes online voting, the board must honor an owner's request to vote electronically at all subsequent elections unless the owner has opted out. This is a newer statute, it's been a little confusing for some people, and we're curious to see if this is an indication from the legislature about how e-voting may be used in the future. But in essence, it says if you implement an e-voting system, and an owner says, "I want to participate in that", for every election where you still have e-voting as an option, you haven't repealed e-voting as a community, those owners are going to have to be allowed to e-vote in those elections. So, this is more about probably just adding a hurdle to trying to remove e-voting once you've implemented it. I think the legislature has realized the benefits of e-voting, and by continuing to allow your members to use e-voting once it's been enacted, I think they're trying to signal to you that, "Hey, this is a great procedure, you should try to use it more."

And if you use it short of having your whole community vote to repeal it, anybody who wants to can vote in an election electronically. So, it's an important cutout there, especially with condos. That is not something that applies to HOAs. This is condo-specific. And with that, I think we'll kick it over to Frank Valdes of Get Quorum, who's going to talk to you about some of the practical aspects of e-voting, and some of the more day-to-day operational type stuff. And Frank, if you're ready, we'll turn it over to you.

Frank Valdes:

Always. Thank you so much, Jim, Jennifer, Cindy, great job, and Michelle, appreciate the opportunity to come here before the audience that we have today. My name is Frank Valdes. I am the regional director for GetQuorum. As Cindy mentioned earlier, excited to be with you this beautiful Florida morning as we embark on some of these conversations. So, here's the good news, and thank you, Jim, for kind of laying out what I call the foundation of e-voting in Florida, right? We get asked usually a lot of questions as to where an association starts, whether it's a condo, or an HOA with the voting process. And Jim just outlines for everyone where you begin that process as well as Jennifer, and Cindy, which is with that resolution, and then getting owners to opt into electronic voting. So, good news, electronic voting is trending. We had a little something called the pandemic quite a few years ago now it feels like decades ago, and it actually elevated the number of condominiums, and HOAs that participated in electronic voting.

This has been around since 2015. Just to be clear to everyone, HOAs, co-ops, and condominiums have had the ability to use electronic voting for their associations, and their membership votes. What we're seeing as an electronic voting provider is north of 32% of the communities in the state of Florida now have documentation that do permit the use of electronic voting for elections, and amendments as well. Again, we walked through some of that legislation earlier in today's presentation, allowing you to have an understanding as to what it meant, how it rolled out the electronic voting process, and just kind of make sure that we went away from any sort of urban legends out there. We get phone calls on a weekly basis asking us if a board has to amend their current documents to use electronic voting. No, you don't. As Jim mentioned, and Jennifer earlier, that simple board resolution will help.

Participation rates, and again, that was mentioned earlier, they fly through the roof. On average, 20% of the owners participate in any given membership-based vote, that is paper only, 80% on average in electronic voting worlds. That includes 55, and better communities out there as well. We've got a ton of case studies all throughout the east, and the sleepy West Coast of Florida where we've got communities north of 80% opting into electronic voting, and electronic notices as well. Massive, massive money saver when you get those notices out electronically. We'll go to the next slide, Michelle, please.

All right, so what is electronic voting? Let's just make sure we all have a grasp on exactly what is electronic voting, because I think as a common name, people assume, "Hey, you're voting electronically." Well, to the point, or mentioned earlier by Cindy, and some of these other folks, you cannot use systems out there such as just a regular email to cast what we would call a secure ballot, or even some of these DocuSign system, I saw that on the chat earlier today in this presentation as well. Those systems are insufficient, so we want to make sure you get the different types of electronic voting, and how they will be cast in these platforms. So, let's walk through these, and they're used interchangeably depending on the type of association that you have. Advanced electronic vote commonly used in our condominiums out there. This is a vote that's going to be cast directly by an owner, or member in advance of the meeting.

All right, so this vote again, the meeting date, official meeting date has not happened yet. However, an owner has already received an electronic ballot in this world, and has the opportunity to cast an electronic vote. Very similar to what we would call out there, a second notice in a condominium for an annual meeting where there is a paper version of a ballot that allows owners to fill that out, submitted, whether they're sending it back by mail, but you are in fact filling out that vote in advance of the meeting. Here's the good news. We do have a lot of HOAs moving into that space as well, especially with all of the developer communities out there. Again, in the West Coast especially, all the new association documents actually speak to the process that allows owners to vote in advance of the meeting, and owners are counted if voting electronically towards quorum.

So, keep that in mind is the biggest benefit. All right. We also have electronic proxies, general, or limited out there, again, used depending on the type of situation that you have in your community. I can tell you for the most part, the general proxies are reserved to HOAs that have voting the day of the annual meeting only, and the general proxy can be used for attendance purposes if you're unable to attend the meeting. However, we've got things like limited proxies out there used by both condos, and HOAs in common days, and they're used mainly for amendments, right? In many cases, these are our bylaw amendments, declaration amendments, and it's completed by a member in again, advance of the meeting that would like to cast that vote. Perhaps they're not going to be at the meeting, or they just want to get their votes taken care of prior to that.

So, that is what we were calling an electronic proxy. All of this is available electronically in today's e-voting world. And then we've got probably the most challenging one out of the group here, the troublemaker, and we're going to call it the real-time vote. The real-time vote is going to be used, generally speaking, for only our HOAs. Most of them will have those older documents from developers that have not changed the language stating that everything happens the day of an annual meeting, right? Owners have to show up to vote. If you don't show up, you cast a general proxy for attendance, and we take things like nominations from the floor, and again, voting the day of. There is technology out there to assist these communities. All right? So, don't get too frustrated. Reach out to an electronic provider, and make sure that whatever situation you're in, it fits obviously your needs, things like that real-time voting can happen in an environment of what we call Zoom webinar where each owner is receiving an individual link to log in, and they are actually voting real-time on their screen.

And just to clarify, no, they're not using the chat feature, and they're definitely not using things like just a survey, or poll in Zoom webinar. It actually requires an integration with a sophisticated electronic voting system, a safe, and secure voting system in that Zoom webinar, or any other webinar technology. So, ask around out there if you are an association of an HOA out there with the challenge of voting real-time the day of. I will tell you we've seen a trend, and a push towards amendments of documents, making sure that these associations trend more so towards the first, and second notice procedures that we have out there for condominiums. So, very common these days, especially from newer communities, to have an annual meeting where there is a first, and second notice, and no nominations from the floor. We look back on certainly our older legacy HOAs, and we've got a ton of real-time voting requirements.

So, again, make sure you're asking these questions from an electronic voting provider, and that they're able to fulfill your specific community's needs as it pertains to the type of electronic vote that you're going to be using. Next slide please, Michelle. All right, so why is it important to choose the right solution? We'll mentioned some of those things earlier, but again, the right solution is imperative when addressing these needs in your community, they're going to speak to things like security. They're going to speak to things like the voting experience from an owner, and reporting, and auditability. Most of those, if not all requirements from the statutes. I know Cindy mentioned them earlier, that's 718.128, or 720.317 for our HOAs out there. You've got to make sure that you're addressing the requirements of the statutes. And so in choosing the electronic voting solution for your specific needs, and your community, make sure you're walking through these things with your vendor. What is the security protocol? Are you complying with all the Florida statutes? What is the voting experience like for our owners? How cumbersome is the electronic voting experience?

I can tell you this, having worked with GetQuorum now a little over four years, and having service north of 3000 associations in North America, a thousand alone in Florida, the voting experience is extremely crucial. If it's a challenging electronic voting experience, you're going to get less participation, and maybe even owners that never use e-voting again. If it's a very simplified, streamlined voting experience, it's going to be the likes of ordering something online like on an Amazon, right? Where owners say, "Hey, this is easy, I can do this again." And so make sure you're choosing the right solution for your community. The auditability, and the reporting is extremely important as well. You've got to comply with these Florida statutes, and in the event, like Jim mentioned earlier, that you've hired an election monitor, every single electronic voting platform should be compliant with their work, and the reports that it generates should actually make their life easier as an election monitor in many of these elections, and many of these votes.

So, this is why communities should opt for e-voting solution. Make sure, again, it accommodates your dynamic nature, including the type of vote that you're going to require for your upcoming meeting. All right, next slide, please. All right, how to choose the right solution. So, look, definitely jump on a demo, make sure that you have a good understanding of the platform that you are obviously considering. User-friendly experience is a must all, it's again, to my words earlier, it's got to be simple, intuitive, and it's got to allow voters to cast votes with ease. If it is very challenging, if it requires, for example, a downloading of an app, and too many authentications beyond what's required by the Florida statutes, and owners have to then select perhaps a subfolder, and find their e-ballot in there. The harder you make that to even find, the more challenging it will be.

Make sure it's customizable. I get a lot of calls from communities saying, "Hey, we've got this type of vote coming up", whether it's a material alteration vote, or whether it is reserve voting. Make sure that these platforms, again, are customizable to your specific needs for your communities, and not the other way around, right? In its simplistic form, and a simplest form, an e-voting platform should actually be following the same processes, and procedures you have set forth already as a community. Security, again, make sure that you've reviewed that, that you've reviewed the security protocols, the features. And the idea is especially for a secret ballot, that it is certainly kept secret in privacy, and in confidence. In terms of reporting, we walk through that, make sure the platform provides comprehensive reporting, everything that would be normally required in an annual meeting, or an amendment if you're working towards those. And then the last one here, a very important one.
I think my biggest certainly advice, one of my biggest takeaways I want you to have today is look for fully managed electronic voting platforms out there. I can tell you that going at all of this alone, or choosing a property manager that perhaps is very tech-savvy, and we've got many of those out there, and throwing them an electronic voting platform, that's all self-service, and they have to learn, and grab a 500-page manual, and figure it out is probably not the best idea as it pertains to electronic voting out there. You want to make sure that the management on the property is supported, that they have, again, a technical team behind them with the electronic voting platform. In ideal world, again, most of the heavy lifting is done by your electronic voting provider. Like any other vendor in your community, make sure that you're paying for them to do the work, and not to create more work, and chaos for your management team, or for year board of directors. Next. We'll go to the next one. 

James "Jim" Turffs, Esq.:

I pulled some questions from the chat where I think we provided some answers, and I think we can actually direct a few more to you.

Frank Valdes:

Perfect.

James "Jim" Turffs, Esq.:

So, I'm going to start with that. I saw somebody ask when having an election, do you have to have the candidates already established on the slate, or can you take members' names from those? I think he's asking about nominations from the floor. I know we've talked about this before, but I'll let you answer that for him.

Frank Valdes:

Yeah, absolutely. So, look, if you're a condo, this conversation probably doesn't apply to you. Our 718s out there, and I see Cindy shaking your head saying it better not be a condo out there. You've got to have those nominations established prior to, I just want to be very clear, and we got to make sure, obviously, that there are intense returns, and that you have an official ballot going out with the vetted candidates. But in the world of our HOAs, our beautiful HOAs in the state of Florida, again, mostly the legacy ones right now, there are systems out there including GetQuorum that can provide support with nominations from the floor. What it looks like, it's pretty efficient, and pretty streamlined. Again, it's a Zoom meeting, it's got to be webinar. You have to know who's logging in. It cannot be a generic link sent to everyone.

You've got to have a moderator in that meeting from the electronic voting provider, right? So, a moderator steps in, listens for the point where there are nominations from the floor, creates an electronic ballot real-time after the candidates have been vetted. Again, I've been in these meetings, we want to make sure that these are vetted candidates by management, by the legal team in the event that they owe money to the association, and that there are some disqualifiers out there. Those candidates have been vetted, but at point where they are valid candidates, usually that can be shouted out to the moderator from the electronic voting provider, and a real-time ballot can be created inside of that space, and immediately available, made available for any electronic voters. Now, keep in mind, the voters must have already previously consented to voting electronically, right? If they haven't consented to voting electronically at this point of the meeting, they've got to vote by paper, or be in person.

If they've opted into electronic voting, there certainly is an environment, and again, the capacity, technically speaking, to have a live ballot right in front of them. So, hopefully that speaks to that. And again, we can get a little bit more granular, and in the weeds about that while my contact information's there if you have a specific use case that you want to provide. But in general, again, technology exists out there even for our nominations from the floor. Here's what I see, and here's what we've seen as a company the last four years.

There's been a massive shift by association legal firms such as obviously Tannenbaum, Lemole & Hill, and you're going to have these conversations with a board of directors, and the members-at-large as to whether making an amendment to the current meeting procedures is in the best interest of the community, and shifting things to what I would call less chaotic process with a first notice, and a second notice, and no nominations from the floor. So, we're quickly seeing a push for a little bit more of a streamlined, efficient process, and leaving the chaos behind, which was created in my estimation many decades ago in some older docs.

James "Jim" Turffs, Esq.:

I'm glad we have enough time here, because we're getting some good questions in the chat now. The next one I pulled aside a little bit earlier, we partially answered, but since it's sort of kicked over to you directly anyway, does GetQuorum have a step-by-step instruction on how an HOA can e-voting? Weirdly enough, I will suggest an answer for you, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure you guys, if they elect to hire you, you help them prepare the resolution, you review their governing documents, I think they pretty much will take care of all of everything start to finish, if I'm not mistaken.

Frank Valdes:

Yeah. So, look in conjunction, and thank you, Jim, for the question. In conjunction with your association attorney, and your property manager, that trio right there will assist the entire process. So, from the perspective of GetQuorum, what we do is we usually have very thorough conversations of demonstrations of the platform, and then jump into a step-by-step what's next. And that email that usually follows the demo has a step-by-step, a templated resolution that I encourage all of the boards to share with their association counsel, because this process should include your attorney for their eyes to review. Obviously, making sure you've got a fourteen-day notice sent out there, a template for that in addition. And then of course, a step-by-step guide as to how to implement electronic voting.

And again, we went through these in today's meeting, but yes, that is certainly part of our conversation coming out of any demonstrations from our software. Someone's got to assist you. I'm a former board member of my own association, and I can tell you, stepping into that role several years ago, I knew very little especially about electronic voting prior to working in this industry. And so you certainly have to have some subject matter experts in all facets. That includes your property manager, your electronic voting provider, and again, association council as we see in today's conversation.

James "Jim" Turffs, Esq.:

I'll answer a quick question that I saw pop up, which was, do these apply to cooperatives? We sort of generally said, yes, e-voting is available to co-ops in the chat. Actually, Frank, and I had discussed this when putting this presentation together. He had encouraged me to mention that 718, 19, and 20 are all, in fact very similar. So, yeah, a lot of this is going to apply to cooperatives, too. Our office personally, we don't handle cooperatives, so I sort of said, "Nah, we're not going to get that question." Apparently we did. So, yeah, 719, you can benefit from a lot of this as well. I'm sure there are probably a couple minor differences because cooperatives, their style of ownership is so vastly different from what people experience. But if you have those questions, I would probably just suggest you email Frank, and see if he can answer some of those, or if in fact, GetQuorum, or somebody like that is able to help you out.

So, now those were the questions I had pulled a little bit earlier since I did that, there were some questions in the chat, one that has been asked a couple of times, and people are very keen in, and that's if a community has both an HOA, and a condominium, do they need two voting systems? I think that's a question that we would need to know more about how those associations are structured together. It's possible in a world where the HOA portion has simply adopted the same voting methods as the condominium, in which case you would still probably have to hold separate meetings, and things like that. You would probably have to have a condo association meeting, the HOA meeting separately. But I mean, if it's the same voting style, then the systems would be substantially identical. So, I hope that [inaudible 00:40:41]

Frank Valdes:

We get that one a lot, Jim, we get that one a lot. I was on a conversation yesterday where there's two legal entities as sub-associations to individual towers, which are almost like twins, and those are sub-associations in our world, legal entities. They have their own annual meeting, they have their own budgets, all that sort of thing. And then there's a master association that is again, a third legal entity in that case. So, structure-wise if there is an annual meeting for each of those, you can use the same electronic voting platform. But each of the associations have to adopt their own resolution Just to be clear. Each of them has to pass that resolution, and each of them, to take it a step further, has to actually get the members to consent to electronic voting, right? A consent to vote electronically in your annual meetings in a sub-association isn't necessarily about consent in your master's association as a legal entity, because those legal entity names do go on those official consent forms.

So, unless they're listed there, it's not going to be valid consent. So, again, structure-wise, speak to any electronic voting provider, especially us, and keep your legal counsel team praised of all this information, because I do get those comments a lot where it's like, "Hey, we've got three entities." And every once in a while we get shocked, and there's a ton of some associations, and they really have no powers, the master's controlling everything. So, it's just really one entity with a ton of small subs that are not official legal entities. So, a ton of structures out there. Check in with us, again, or legal counsel, and your e-voting providers to make sure that we're on the same page.

James "Jim" Turffs, Esq.:

We've got a few more minutes here, so it's great that you were talking about that consent, because it does bring us to some other questions that have been asked in the chat such as "Electronic consent's not just by email. How about checking a box on a portal after log in?" Would you like to talk to our fans here a little bit about exactly how electronic consent works in the world of e-voting, and just what that is, what they need to get?

Frank Valdes:

Yeah, absolutely. So, look, the statutes were updated last year to allow for a collection of an electronic consent form. So, owners are now able to, and I'm glad they did, by the way, because I have purchased cars electronically, right? With an electronic signature in the state of Florida, this is as valid as a wet signature these days. So, they were updated to allow owners to basically, we'll call it sign consent form electronically, and submit that. And so consent forms are official documents that are allowing an owner to opt in, or consent to electronic voting. And we take it a step further, usually it's electronic notices as well. They haven't opted in to those, but those are two separate items on that consent form. Those can be collected by a provider like GetQuorum. And again, make sure you're hiring a provider that assists you with that step.

It's a crucial step. If you do not get consent, you've got no electronic votes. So, you do have to get owners to consent, or opt into electronic voting. By default, every single owner's opted out of electronic voting. I wish those statutes were a little backwards. Instead, everyone's opted in unless they opt out, but they are in fact what they are today. And it's every owner's opted out. They've got opt in, or consent that can be done in two ways. Either A, in writing on a form, they can physically sign a consent form, and submit it, and turn it in to association management, or to us, that is an official record of the association by the way, moving forward. So, when we've got owners contesting, "Hey, I forgot it's been two weeks, or two years, I forgot if I even opted into electronic voting, do you have the official documents where I consented?"

You've got to provide that as a management company, or as a board of directors out there to these owners. And so GetQuorum does a good job at obviously collecting those consents electronically, grandfathering any that may have been collected by paper. But a checkbox in an electronic voting platform where there's no signature electronic signature, or otherwise is in our vision wholly insufficient. We've got owners coming from other platforms, and we're asking them, "Do you have official consents collected?" And they say, "No. An owner just checked the box. There was never a signature. Nothing was ever officially signed." So, we've got no official record for the association to have, and show here moving forward. So, we've got to reset the process at that point, but it should be an official consent form, and we're happy to provide samples of what those look like.

James "Jim" Turffs, Esq.:

So, I'm looking at the chat. There are a couple of specific questions that are probably technical, or specific to GetQuorum. So, for a couple of people, somebody was asking about if you integrate with Sync software, somebody's asking maybe a discussion about pricing. I think those would probably all be great questions to email Frank separately, because I'm assuming your pricing depends a lot on what the association's requirements are, things like that. So, for those technical specific questions where they're going to need it, and I see somebody is talking about Sync in there, I have no idea what that is, quite frankly. So, unless you particularly want to talk about those issues, I would suggest y'all just email Frank, and have him talk to you about that separately.

Frank Valdes:

Yeah, and I'll give him a quick 30 second rundown for those asking if we have integrations with platforms. The reason they're doing that is because those integrations are important, they pull the owner data over to us, and give us the most up-to-date ownership data as managers are updating it in their end. And yes, we do have integrations with several platforms, so please check in with us. In terms of cost, just overall, without getting too granular here, electronic voting as a whole is generally budget neutral. So, for my board members on the call today, maybe the treasurer's panicking a little bit saying, "How are we going to pay for electronic voting even if we wanted it?" It is usually a few dollars per door per year.

And again, it is extremely budget neutral because of the fact that it usually equates to a massive reduction in printing for an association. And those are big line items, especially the more north of 100, or 200 units you have in association. Printing's very expensive these days. These packets are costing about $5.00. Stamps alone, I've seen in these annual mailers could be a $1.30, $1.50. So, budget neutral, check in with us for more information. I do appreciate the calls, and you're right, it is bubbling up. I see the chat. The more we answer, the more we get Jim, right?

James "Jim" Turffs, Esq.:

Yeah, we do still have a few more minutes to take questions if anybody else else has anything pressing. Otherwise, I was just going to sort of put you on the spot, and say, give me a minute. So, what are all the benefits of e-voting? Like just list them out, run them off, or something. Again, because when we put together this course, I think the smart board, I think one of our main goals was to illustrate to communities out there, because e-voting became a statute some years ago. It seems like everybody made a quick decision. We're either going to adopt it, or we're not. And after the first couple years of e-voting being permissible, it just sort of seems, as a general counsel attorney, I just didn't hear anybody ask about it anymore.

It seemed just to not a question that comes back to us. And I think it's important to get out there, and remind our communities again now that enough time has passed that hey, e-voting, just because you don't do it doesn't mean it's not right for you. And so I think to the best of your ability, and a minute, or two if you can just run down post, we talked about some of it as we went through this course, but again, I'd like to drive home just the many benefits that e-voting offers, even small communities. So, if you'd just like to do a quick rundown, I think you'd probably do it better than I could.

Frank Valdes:

I appreciate the question. Absolutely. Look, we've got communities from 36 doors, which shocked me, quite honestly. I was like, whoa, usually you can knock on 30 doors in a relatively small amount of time. Surprised they were even contacting us, but the owners weren't there. They were in another states, or in another country. These were in many cases investment properties, and they needed their participation. They needed their vote, whether it was for an annual meeting, or for amendments in that specific community. And then we've got communities north of 19,000 doors, and growing. And so those are the Babcock ranches of the world in Fort Myers. They are large. There is no way to get owners to participate, and vote. You'd have to rent. Imagine an annual meeting physically people attending, and voting. You need a stadium for a community of that size.

So, whether you're the 36 doors that the owners may, or may not live in Florida, and you still need their participation, and their official vote while they're away somewhere in another state, or whether you're 19,000 doors, and you feel like there's no way we're going to collect all these votes, and people probably would not vote, and can imagine the cost to send out 19,000 official annual meeting notices by mail in that community. So, whether it's savings on obviously the printing, and postage, or whether it's your participation, because your community that's frustrated, and hasn't updated your governing docs in years, in decades in some cases, and they're just sitting there still from the developer, and we've got presidents, and board members out there saying, "There's no way we're getting the participation rates that are required to amend our docs."
In some cases is 66, and two-thirds right, or even higher thresholds. But you're going to get it with electronic voting. So, the biggest benefits, Jim, to just kind of summarize it for obviously the members here on the call today, and all the participants, there's a few, there's a few big ones. It's participation, which is not a bad thing, especially when you're trying to amend your association docs, and pass something like reserve funding, or material alteration votes, or special assessments. You need a vote from the owners? Leverage electronic voting as a tool for your community. And it's also engagement. Community engagement is at an all-time high.

People want to know whether there should be new pickleball courts on the community, or whether we should add a dog park to our community. Well, you start that with surveys, but the official ownership vote comes with electronic voting. And so we all have these smartphones. I think that in most of the communities, probably about 90% of the owners have one, and it's easy to just vote on a phone versus physically showing up to these meetings. And so there's a whole host of benefits, and whether it's us, or someone else, I do feel extremely confident that every single community in Florida, association-wise, co-ops, condos will have an electronic voting provider in the coming future. It's just going to be a normal course of business, almost like they have websites, and those website requirements are going up as you see, they're going to have an e-voting provider. It's just going to be part of the course of doing business for them.

James "Jim" Turffs, Esq.:

Yeah, I found myself spending about an hour, and a half talking to a cam from South Florida yesterday, and we got on the topic of e-voting, and yeah, he was just a voracious advocate for it, and was talking about a lot of those issues. I mean, yeah, it might be a couple hundred bucks that you're spending on a vote, or something, but you're saving that much in postage at the same time. And yeah, just voter apathy is something we deal with on a regular basis where you just cannot get members to turn up at meetings. They just don't vote by proxy. They don't come in. Sending in a letter, quite frankly, in this day, and age seems like a hassle. So, doing it that way is sort of easy.

I did see an interesting question that Jen sort of gave mostly the right answer to in the chat here, which was about our condo association manager, or CAM has a portal, would they be able to satisfy the e-voting requirements through that portal? Jen sort of rightly said, "It's unlikely." Frank, are you aware of any cam, without naming names, or anything, are you aware of any cams that are off? Do cams in general offer? Have you seen any that offer a valid, sufficient e-voting system? Have you heard of that? I'm not familiar with any, but?

Frank Valdes:

No, none that I've seen anyways. I've seen voting portals out there. Some of them have been even attached to the kind of, I guess, management platforms. They've been wholly insufficient as far as we're concerned. We've seen them. They are more of a polling system than they are electronic voting system. And from a manager's world, you've got to now train a manager to create an electronic ballot in the system. You've got to make sure they don't screw up the ballot. You've got to send it to these owners. You've got to track these notices, whether an owner even received an electronic vote, or not when they received it, right? There's got to be tracking capabilities, a whole bunch of requirements that are usually not met by those systems.

But look, we're happy to, again, to have a deeper conversation into those. Ask questions. Get with an electronic voting provider. A polling system is not electronic voting system, and an electronic voting system is not a management platform. These are very different sophisticated systems with the intent of getting the job done. We are happy to discuss it a little bit deeper, check in with us. But yeah, in many cases, they're sophisticated polling platforms is what they are.

Cindy Hill, Esq.:

I think that's a very good point, Frank, that this really is a sophisticated service that's being offered. These specific statutory requirements are important, because if they're not followed, your vote can be contested legally for failing to follow the requirements, and then you have to redo everything. So, what money have you saved? None.

Frank Valdes:

Absolutely. And beyond the savings, again, the participation rates, the way that they jump up, the way that you get these owners to engage, and pass some of these amendments, and things of that nature that weren't done for many years. It's huge for these associations. It's massive. So, connect with an e-voting provider. Take a look at all of the benefits that they can provide your community. And from my managers on the call today, I have not heard one manager, and I'm going on five years here almost this year. I've not heard one manager come back to me, and say, "Hey, Frank, it was a lot harder to do our annual meeting with e-voting", right? This was challenging for us. On the contrary, because these votes are usually tallied, and tabulated electronically, and efficiently, there's a lot less meeting time, right?

So, the meeting time now gets cut down possibly hours in some of these larger associations. So, these managers are loving the fact that maybe the annual meeting ran three, or four hours shorter in some of these cases, and they weren't there until 12, midnight, or two in the morning. I hear these horror stories, and so from a manager's perspective, get familiar with the e-voting world. If you're not already, it will be again in your back pocket coming up very soon, just like any other official kind of service for a community.

James "Jim" Turffs, Esq.:

I just wanted to add one more comment. I think we're probably getting pretty close to wrapping up here, but we've talked about how much of a benefit e-voting can be, and again, that was the purpose of this meeting, is to drive home how much of a benefit it is. But you started talking about... I started thinking about website requirements, and just how the statutes are constantly leaning more toward electronic participation in your community. We now have these much stricter website requirements. Your official records generally need to be stored online. There's all this stuff, and I think it represents a larger trend for just progress as time goes on, and the electronics, and the devices, the software, all become more available to the communities, we're going to see overall the statutes. And there may be a world in the not too distant future where e-voting might even become required.

And so I think for the smaller communities, it's going to be a harder transition, and the statutes are aware of that, and communities less than 25. It's my understanding coming next year, it may be condos of units of 25, or more need websites. And if that's the case, you can see that they're consistently pushing that. So, communities out there should probably plan to adopt as much electronic compliance as they can, because it's far more likely to become required in the future than just go away. So, getting ahead of that curve is probably going to be helpful as well. So, I don't know, Cindy, if Frank, anyone else has any other parting shots, or if we're ready to wrap up, but...

Frank Valdes:

Just want to thank everybody for being out here. I see a lot of the faces, and I see the engagement. I can't thank you enough for tuning in. And again, thank you to obviously Tannenbaum, Lemole & Hilt for having me here, Michelle, for making this stuff happen. Jim, Cindy, Jen, I appreciate it. We're here as a resource to you, so please, please look for us at the trade shows out there. Call us, email us, really. And I want to help board members as I sat behind those chairs, and you need some resources. So, to find ladies, and gentlemen on the panel today. Can't thank you enough. Wishing everybody a wonderful day here.

Cindy Hill, Esq.:

Well, we thank you, Frank, for joining us. This has been very beneficial, not just for us, but for our participants, and we really thank you for the time.

Frank Valdes:

My pleasure.

Cindy Hill, Esq.:

All right, well thanks to everyone for joining us. We will see you next month. Topic to be determined, I believe, so watch that space. Thank you.

Jennifer Hicks, Esq.:

Thank you.

Frank Valdes:

Have a wonderful day everyone. Have a great week.