Why More HOAs Are Adopting E-Voting

When my company started providing online voting to HOAs in 2007, only Oregon, Virginia and Delaware allowed community associations to elect their boards through e-voting. More recently, we’ve seen demand growing as a number of states -- Maryland, South Carolina, Minnesota, Washington, Nevada and Texas -- passed bills allowing HOAs to offer electronic voting to their members. California and New Jersey are considering similar bills.

A groundswell of demand has followed these legislative and technology trends. Most of that is because many more people are looking at what technology can do for HOAs. For example, our company website traffic has increased about 1000% when comparing January 1 to March 31 2009 to the same period this year.

As is typical with new technology, board and managers were slow to adopt it, as they just weren’t sure what to do with it yet. This reminds me of the web environment for online applications in 1994, when I started a web design and application company. Business owners regularly asked me:

• Why would we need email, we have a FAX machine? 
• Why would we ever need a website? 
• And now, why should our HOA adopt electronic voting? 

Both board members and managers like using e-voting to conduct business of the association for several reasons:

• E-Voting increases participation and is often the key factor in making quorum. In some cases HOAs that haven’t made quorum in years break that losing streak in their first year. 
• E-Voting saves time. It takes minutes to set up an election and load voter data, but the real time-saver is in counting ballots, because you don’t have to. Results are tabulated as soon as votes are cast. They are 100% accurate; recounting is unnecessary. 
• E-Voting is more secure than conventional voting. Despite what you may have seen in the movies, it’s very difficult for someone to actually hack into a well-protected system and do harm. On the other hand, most HOA ballots or proxy forms are easily duplicated and anybody that can drive to Kinkos could do just that. 

Homeowners really like the convenience of voting online too. They can do it from anywhere, in a car, in a bar, over coffee at Starbucks, at work, home or on vacation and via computer or smart phone, tablet or laptop. It only takes a couple of minutes.

Generally speaking people are expecting more and more services to be available online or by phone app. It’s the world we live in today. It won’t be long before voting online will become the norm. After all, how many people do you know that don’t have an email address?

Scott McKeel is president and CEO of Strateja-XL , Inc., established in 2000. The company offers the Vote HOA Now application for electronic voting, which is being used by HOAs across the country. More information about e-voting can be found on the company’s website.