An annual owner's meeting is one of the most vital components in ensuring condominium and homeowners' associations across Florida run efficiently.
Required under the Condominium Act, Florida Administrative Codes, an annual owner's meeting, also know as an owner's meeting is an opportunity for residents of COA's and HOA's to be proactively involved in their association's governance and operations.
Owners who cannot attend the in-person meeting can still participate in the annual owner's meeting process, traditionally by submitting a paper proxy and absentee ballot.
For Property Managers, collecting paper proxies and absentee ballots is a frustrating and time-consuming task. To streamline the process, many Property Managers have begun promoting the use of electronic voting for their association's annual owner's meeting.
Electronic voting allows owners to vote either in advance or during the meeting electronically. This allows owners to proactively be involved in the annual owner's meeting process while improving efficiency and reducing printing costs that would normally be associated with the printing and mailing of meeting materials.
However, before an owner can submit votes electronically, they must submit a signed voting certificate.
Voting Certificates - What are they, and why are they so important?
A voting certificate is not only used to identify the voting representative for a unit when it's owned by more than one person, a corporation, or other entity. Owners are also required to sign a voting certificate to be eligible for electronic voting.
Electronic voting has become a prudent factor in ensuring the success of an annual owner's meeting; however, its benefits are often not truly realized unless a large portion of an association's owners votes electronically.
This has encouraged many Property Managers to look for ways to simplify the voter certificate sign-off process to increase owner submissions, resulting in increased electronic voting eligibility across their associations' ownership so that electronic voting can be utilized more predominantly from annual owner's meetings.
Collecting Voting Certificates - What it looks like today...
Traditionally, voting certificates are either physically mailed or sent to owners via email by the Property Manager well in advance of the association's annual owner's meeting. The owners would then be required to physically fill out the documentation and return it to the Property Manager through email or mail by a specific date to ensure the association's annual owner's meeting processes can continue as planned.
This heavily paper-based process is not only expensive and time-consuming for both owners and Property Managers, but it is also vulnerable to errors because of incomplete or incorrectly completed documentation being submitted by owners and sending these documents via email or mail makes them susceptible to security breaches, delivery delays, and misplacement.
Due to its cost, inconvenience, and other vulnerabilities, many owners chose not to submit voting certificates altogether.
This has made many Property Managers eager to utilize solutions and services designed to simplify the voting certificate submission process for their associations’ owners.
Looking for a Better Way - Collecting voting certificates electronically
In recent years, many Florida Property Managers have turned to GetQuorum and begun utilizing our Voter Certificate and Consent service to collect voting certificates for their upcoming annual owner's meetings.
Using our Voter Certificate and Consent service, Property Managers can securely send out requests for owners to fill out and submit a voting certificate. Owners can then sign and submit their voting certificate back to the Property Manager with just a few clicks of a button.
This simplifies the process of sending, submitting, and collecting voting certificates for both Property Managers and owners. As a result, many Property Managers have seen an increase in voting certificate submissions, which means increased electronic voting eligibility across their associations' ownership. This ultimately leads to an increased usage of electronic voting, resulting in more efficient and productive annual owner's meetings.
Collecting voting certificates through our Voter Certificate and Consent service also acts as a consent form for electronic Notice of Meeting distribution. This means that Property Managers will also be receiving consent to distribute Notice of Meeting electronically when collecting voter certificates, further streamlining the annual owner's meeting process while reducing print-related costs that would usually be associated with distributing the Notice of Meeting.
Ready to get started?
If you'd like to learn more about our Voter Certificate and Consent service or other services designed to help you run more effective and efficient annual owner's meetings, click here.
If you'd like to use our Voter Certificate and Consent service for your associations' upcoming annual owner's meeting, get in touch with our team today.