We’ve received our packets for the 2026 Annual Meeting, and I have an issue with this year’s proxy form. You can read more about how they generally work here, but the problem with this year’s form is that, if an owner doesn’t name the person they want to receive the power to vote on their behalf, that power goes to the president of the board (currently Ray Aguirre) by default.
In the past, if no one was named on a proxy form, that form would still count toward helping us reach quorum, which is required in order to hold the meeting at all, but no vote would be cast on behalf of that owner, and this is the way it ought to work. Paula Simmons, our Association Manager, even stated that that was how it would work this year, at about the 18:40 mark of this recording of the Candidate Forum we held in December. Except that it’s not how the form we just received will work.
It’s a bad idea to have the form default to anybody if no name is filled in. The problem is that some number of owners who turn in a proxy form won’t bother to read it carefully–they’ll just sign it and send it in in order to be good citizens and help us make quorum–and that will lead to somebody (in this case, Ray, but it doesn’t matter who) gaining voting power that hasn’t been deliberately given to him.
The purpose of elections is to determine the will of the people, but allowing some percentage of the voting power to default to one person muddies that. Imagine if, in a federal, state, or municipal election, you could send in an absentee ballot but if you failed to mark a vote for every contest or proposition on the ballot, the incumbent office-holder or party would get to cast those votes.
The proxy forms shouldn’t default voting power to anyone. The owner should have to consciously fill in the name of the person they want to grant their voting power to. This is how Paula said it would work, but it’s not what the actual proxy forms do.
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