Electronic Voting – What to Expect. Is it a Good Fit for Your Association?

By Bradley Epstein, Esq, Ed Snow, Robert Smith, & Richard Seim

This article first appeared in our Communicator Magazine, Winter 2026 Issue.

WHAT HAPPENS IN A TYPICAL ELECTION?

The board wonders why they have to think about an election again, since it’s only been five months since the last one. They wrestle with the usual choices (Election date? Acclamation? Hire the inspector now or wait? How to get members to participate?) They begin charming, shaming or strong-arming the members to volunteer, to nominate, to update their records, to show up and help stuff envelopes for the call for nominations ... and the reminder ... and the pre-ballot notice ... and the ballot ... and another reminder. At some point, the volunteers realize that paper elections consist largely of putting envelopes inside other envelopes, and then taking them out, and also that their bargaining position allows them to insist on pizza while they work. The election meeting arrives, either with or without a quorum of members participating. If no, the volunteers relax and go home, while the current board bewails their fate for another year. If the association has been diligent, or just lucky, a quorum of ballots come back, and the inspector can commandeer the 10 or 15 square feet of the conference table required to process 50 or 100 or 1,000 envelopes and ballots. Volunteers have to be shamed or strong-armed (charm having worn off by this point) to open or count or cross-check or just stand around sternly watching. Envelopes and ballots have to be discarded for lack of a signature, or member information, or due to ambiguous, incomplete, or impolite scrawlings on the ballot. Minutes or hours later, the numbers eventually add up, and the inspector can announce who will be on the board for the next cycle of charming, shaming, or strong-arming, just five short months away.

WHAT HAPPENS IN A BETTER ELECTION?

After the board laughs themselves silly at the suggestion that they would spend extra for an election by acclamation, they relax for two months and then pick an election date and hire an inspector. The inspector selects one of the numerous tested and inexpensive online voting service vendors, receives a copy of the association’s computer list of member information, loads it into her computer, checks the formatting, and corrects typos. A form document is updated with the association’s information, it gets proofread, there’s a tap on the inspector’s keyboard, and the call for nominations email goes out online to all the members. A week before the deadline, or as often as the association wants, the inspector devotes 10 minutes to updating a much shorter form, taps a key, and a reminder goes out to everyone. At the nomination deadline, the inspector checks her inbox for nominations, checks their qualifications, copies the names onto another form, waits 30 days, hits the key a third time, and the pre-ballot notice goes out. A few of the notices bounce or disappear into someone’s spam folder, phone calls are exchanged, corrections are made, and all the members have received their notice. Thirty days before the voting deadline, the inspector lays out and fills in the form for the ballot. The instructions on how to vote are maybe two dozen words. Ballots are received by the members as links on an email on things like phones or desktop computers that they pay attention to and rarely lose. Two clicks of the mouse, and the member sees their ballot. A review of the candidate statements conveniently included with the ballot, a few seconds of typing, a quick proofread, one more click, and the ballot is on its way. Authentication is automatic – each member gets a clickable link unique to them. The day of the election meeting arrives. The inspector stares at her watch until the deadline, opens a web- site on her phone, waits a minute or two, and announces that quorum has been reached and the names of the winning candidates. Associations who keep good computer member lists write the inspector a check for about half what elections used to cost. The local purveyors of pizza record a slight drop in sales.

IS IT REALLY THAT EASY?

Once the inspector and association man- ager know what they’re doing, yes.

HOW DO WE GET FROM TYPICAL TO BETTER?
Adopt online voting by electronic secret ballot.

The legal requirements are simple: add a paragraph to the association’s election

rules authorizing online voting, specifying either that members will opt into or opt out of online voting (Civil Code section 5105(i)). There are requirements for disclosures to the members (Civil Code see 5105(i) and 5110(c)(4)). Limitations include prohibitions on online voting on assessments, and on floor nominations. It’s not clear how proxies can be handled in an online election – they are not mentioned in the statute.

Because California law makes the members’ email addresses both the means for communication, and also their identification (Civil Code sec 5105(i) and 5110(c)(4)), members must have a valid and unique email address to give to the association in order to vote online.

Note that because the inspector has to be in sole and complete control of the online voting, it’s not feasible for the association to wait to engage the inspector until the pre-ballot (60 day) notice deadline – the inspector should be engaged no later than the time the calls for nominations are made, to ensure that the additional online voting notices are sent correctly, and there is adequate time to ensure that the inspector can validate each member’s email address. There are standards for transparency, secrecy, and auditability to be met by the inspector.

HOW COMPLICATED IS IT TO SET UP?

For the association, easy – just provide a complete detailed member list and the election date to the inspector.

For the inspector, once he has online voting set up, and the learning curve climbed, also easy. The first year of online voting typically involves the election inspector and association manager working together to update and organize the list of association members.

But in exchange for that transitional work, so much gets easier for the association. Reminders and updates about the election (and other association issues) become 15 minutes of work and virtu- ally free to send. Members learn that communicating with their association is now easier than communicating with their bank: no app to download, no password to remember, just their email address.

LEARNING CURVE? YOU SAID IT WAS EASY!
It is. But there’s a lot that goes into making it easy. In particular:
• computer servers with internet connections that can handle hundreds or thousands of votes;
• software that can limit voting to those entitled to vote, and at the same time keep how they voted confidential;
• a system that can handle phones, tablets and desktop computers, from Apple, Windows, Chrome, and Android, with operating systems from MacOS 26 all the way back to Windows XP; and
• providing email communication with voters that is not only reliable, but can confirm that emails are going to and being received and opened by the voters at the addresses the voters specified.

All those services are available from a large selection of voting and emailing vendors. It’s a mature industry – more than 30 states have been allowing online HOA elections for years – and the prices for good services range from $20 to $200 per association per election. How much postage can you buy for $200?

The fact is that reliable online voting requires a lot more than an app and a desktop computer to operate. It’s a lot of data, from a lot of sources, with a lot of security, and a lot of verification.

But neither the association nor the inspector has to worry about any of that. The vendors, their programmers, and their customer service staff handle all of it.

The inspector’s learning curve includes:

• getting the association’s member list data into a form the vendor can use;
• adapting the voting procedures the vendor offers to match California requirements and the needs of the association; and
• working with voters to enable the hundreds of potential combinations of computers/phones/tablets, operating systems, and user skills levels to work together.

It sounds worse than it is. It really does just work.

SKILL LEVEL? THAT’S OMINOUS!

Anyone who can order some McDonald’s from DoorDash can handle online voting.

HOW DOES THE VOTER EXPERIENCE CHANGE FROM USING PAPER BALLOTS TO AN ONLINE BALLOT?

It does get easier for everyone involved. Especially for the homeowners who are voting. Ease of voting and ease of communication are the two main ways that electronic elections change the voting experience.

Contrast ease of online voting with paper voting: In order to vote on paper, a homeowner has to wade through the difficulty of opening their mail and sifting through all of the papers/forms, selecting their option, finding a way to send it back to the inspector, and having it physically sorted through and counted on election day. Each of these take a long period of time. Ease of communication means the main interactive aspects for the voter are receiving/reading the notices as they come down the tube to their email inbox. Validating information that is given to them, which they can respond to instantly with any questions by replying to the email. Then at any time before the election, just opening up the electronic ballot, selecting their options, and pressing submit.

And something that comes along with electronic communication/voting is that all communications can be done near instantaneously. With physical elections you end up with a much longer tail when it comes to homeowner->association->inspector communications. The inspector has to wait for voters to get the ballots/ notices, the voters can then contact the inspector via phone/email/mail, any new updates or changes then need to be fully modified and sent back out via snail mail. And then the inspector waits for ballots to come back in. Electronically everything can be handled and sent out with very little delay.

It will pay the association to encourage members to provide email addresses and agree to receive all association communications by email. People may not have stamps or know where the post office is, but they always have their phones.

HOW SECURE AND ACCURATE IS ALL THIS?
At the inspector’s and association’s end, very secure. The only information about the member involved is their name, unit address, and email. No financial or sensitive identity information is at risk. Links to vote are separate, individual, and unique. There’s no question of bad actors being able to manipulate the election by a flood of fraudulent votes.

No system can be more secure than the people using it. But aside from disclosing how a particular member voted, the entire process is transparent: who voted, the totals, how many ballots were spoiled or blank, all with an audit trail available if needed. The ballots themselves are available for inspection if the association wishes.

And the voting systems eliminate the most common errors: Typical voting errors like overvotes, and ambiguous marking of ballots, are simply not possible, because the system detects the problem before the ballot is cast and shows the voter what needs to be corrected before the ballot can be sub- mitted. Vote counts and totals don’t depend on fallible humans.

I HEAR YOU SAYING IT. BUT HOW DOES IT LOOK TO AN ACTUAL ASSOCIATION?

From the management side, moving to electronic elections has been a huge benefit for everyone involved. Any time we can save an association money and cut out the manual process of printing and handling ballots, it’s a win. What Ed’s noticed on the management side is that he actually gets more communication from homeowners when the election is electronic. That extra engagement is helpful because it gives the management company the chance to answer questions early and clear up any confusion before it becomes an issue.

Different member service becomes necessary. Emails accidentally or intentionally get lost or end up in the spam folder, members forget to update the association when they change email addresses, efforts need to be made to assure members that emails about the election from previously unknown addresses are real and safe.

The biggest challenge is always the upfront work – getting homeowners to opt in and making sure we have accurate emails. But once that part is taken care of, everything else becomes easier. Communication improves across the board, not just during elections but throughout the year. Future elections run smoother, and day-to-day updates reach home- owners faster and more reliably. In the long run, the time we spend collecting emails pays off and really helps strengthen the connection between the association and its members.

YOU MAKE IT SOUND PRETTY GOOD.

It is pretty good. Give it a try. You have nothing to lose but your pizza. ■

Richard Seim & Robert Smith of Great Valley Election Inspectors, serving California com- munities since 2020. www.greatvalleyelec- tioninspectors.com

Ed Snow of HOA Management & Real Estate, serving California communities since 2021.

Bradley J. Epstein of Grime Law LLP, serving you for your association’s legal needs.