Disputed HOA Elections in Florida: The 60-Day Deadline, Division Arbitration, and What an Arbitrator Can Do

Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA
Founder & Managing Shareholder

• Published September 25, 2026
• Reviewed by Jason Hamilton Mikes, JD, MBA, September 26, 2026
• Florida Statutes as of July 1, 2026
• Applies to: HOAs

Florida deliberately declined to create a state agency to regulate homeowners associations, with one carved-out exception: election and recall disputes. Those go to binding arbitration with the department, or to court, and they are expressly excluded from the presuit mediation track that covers most other HOA disputes. The window is 60 days from the announcement of the results. What the association does in the first week after a challenge surfaces usually determines how the rest of it goes.

The one place the state does step in

Section 720.302(2) states the policy plainly. The Legislature recognizes that it is not in the best interest of homeowners' associations or the individual association members thereof to create or impose a bureau or other agency of state government to regulate the affairs of homeowners' associations. That is why an HOA has no Division filing obligation comparable to a condominium's, and why the answer to "can we complain to the state?" is usually no.

The same subsection then creates the exception. In accordance with section 720.311, the Legislature finds that homeowners' associations and their individual members will benefit from an expedited alternative process for resolution of election and recall disputes and presuit mediation of other disputes involving covenant enforcement, and it authorizes the department to hear, administer, and determine these disputes.

So the department's jurisdiction over homeowners associations is narrow and specific. It reaches election disputes and recall disputes. It does not make the department a general regulator of your budget, your architectural decisions or your enforcement practices. A single arbitration petition is not the beginning of state supervision. But within its lane, the department's authority is real and the process is binding.

That narrowness has a second consequence. Because there is no general regulator, there is far less published guidance for homeowners associations than for condominiums, and a board cannot settle a close election question by finding a Division declaratory statement on point. Our overview of how Chapter 720 works explains where that leaves a board.

The 60-day deadline

Section 720.306(9)(a) provides that any challenge to the election process must be commenced within 60 days after the election results are announced. That sentence does a lot of work, and both sides of a dispute tend to misread it.

The trigger is the announcement of the results, not the date of the meeting, not the date the minutes are approved, and not the date an owner learned of an irregularity. Announce the results at the meeting and record the announcement, with the date, in the minutes. If counting continues after the meeting, note when and how the results were announced. That entry is the first thing anyone will look for later.

The statute says the challenge must be commenced within 60 days, which on the arbitration track means the petition is filed with the department inside the window. An association receiving a late challenge should not simply ignore it. Timeliness is raised as a defense by counsel in the response, not by a letter from the board telling the owner the deadline has passed.

For the board, the practical significance runs the other way. Sixty days after the annual meeting is roughly when the association can start treating the election as settled. Until then nothing gets destroyed, no ballots are recycled, and the election file stays intact.

Where the dispute goes

Section 720.311(1) provides that the department shall conduct binding arbitration of election disputes between a member and an association, and states directly that election disputes and recall disputes are not eligible for presuit mediation and must be arbitrated by the department or filed in a court of competent jurisdiction.

Two things follow. There is a choice of forum, department arbitration or court. And there is no mediation prerequisite in this category, which matters more for a board's planning. A member who believes the election was defective can file immediately. There is no 20-day demand letter to buy time, no mediator to select, and no cooling-off period in the statute.

Filing a petition for arbitration or serving a demand for presuit mediation under section 720.311 tolls the applicable statute of limitations, which matters where an election dispute is entangled with other claims.

The department charges the parties a fee adequate to cover all costs and expenses it incurs in the proceeding, and the petitioner initially remits a filing fee of at least $200. The low entry cost is deliberate. A board assuming the expense of filing will deter a determined member is usually wrong.

Why presuit mediation does not apply here, and when it does

Presuit mediation under section 720.311(2)(a) is the default track for most HOA disputes, and knowing its boundary keeps a board from serving the wrong paper. That subsection covers disputes between an association and a parcel owner regarding use of or changes to the parcel or the common areas and other covenant enforcement disputes, disputes regarding amendments to the association documents, disputes regarding meetings of the board and committees appointed by the board, membership meetings not including election meetings, and access to the official records of the association.

Note the two exclusions written into that list. Election meetings are carved out of the membership meetings category. And disputes subject to presuit mediation do not include the collection of any assessment, fine, or other financial obligation, including attorney's fees and costs, claimed to be due.

Where presuit mediation does apply, the responding party has 20 days from the mailing of the statutory demand to serve a response, and persons who fail or refuse to participate in the entire mediation process may not recover attorney's fees and costs in subsequent litigation. That penalty is the reason a demand for presuit mediation is never something to set aside until the board's next regular meeting.

A records dispute arising out of an election may well belong on the mediation track, because access to the official records is on the list. A member refused the sign-in sheets who then challenges the election may be running on two tracks at once. Our guides to records request mistakes and HOA official records requirements cover the records side.

What an arbitrator can order

Here the statute is thinner than boards expect. Chapter 720 does not contain a list of remedies available in an HOA election arbitration. It says the department shall conduct binding arbitration of election disputes, and it provides for fees and costs, but it does not enumerate what the arbitrator may award.

In practice the relief sought is some combination of setting aside the result, ordering a new election under stated procedures, seating or unseating a director, and ordering the association to produce or preserve records. What a particular arbitrator will grant on a particular record is a question for counsel with the file in hand, and a board told confidently what will happen should ask on what authority.

Two things deserve attention regardless of remedy. A rerun election is expensive and disruptive, and the membership pays for it, including the owners who brought the challenge. And the defect that gets an election set aside is usually small, documented and avoidable: a notice mailed twelve days out instead of fourteen, an ineligible candidate left on the ballot, ballots opened before eligibility was verified. The errors in our guide to common HOA election mistakes are the ones that show up in petitions.

A board's instinct after a challenge is often to rerun the election on its own motion. Sometimes that is right and it ends the dispute. Sometimes it produces a second defective election and a second petition. Make that decision with counsel, at a noticed board meeting, on a written record.

Attorney's fees, and why a small dispute gets expensive

Section 720.311(1) provides that the prevailing party in an arbitration proceeding shall recover its reasonable costs and attorney fees in an amount found reasonable by the arbitrator. Separately, section 720.305(1) allows the association or any member to bring an action to redress an alleged failure or refusal to comply with the statute or the governing documents, and gives the prevailing party in any such litigation reasonable attorney fees and costs.

Fee-shifting is what turns a dispute about a two-day notice error into a real financial question. A member who files a $200 petition and prevails on a technical defect can recover fees far exceeding anything at stake in the seat. The exposure runs both ways, which is why a well-documented election is the cheapest insurance an association buys.

Four consequences for how a board should behave:

• Take the first letter seriously. A response that concedes nothing but answers accurately, sent by counsel, resolves many of these before a petition is filed.
• Do not let a director argue the matter personally by email with the challenging owner. Those emails become exhibits, and they raise official records questions of their own.
• Evaluate the merits honestly and early. If the notice really did go out twelve days before the meeting, the money is better spent on a clean rerun than on defending the count.
• Check the association's insurance. Whether any of this is covered is worth asking before the fees accumulate rather than after.

Recall disputes run on a related but separate track

Recall is governed by section 720.303(10), and the deadlines there are measured in business days rather than the 60 days that apply to an election challenge. A member of the board may be recalled and removed with or without cause by a majority of the total voting interests.

Where the recall is by written agreement, the board must duly notice and hold a board meeting within 5 full business days after receipt of the agreement in writing. Where the recall is voted at a members meeting, the board must duly notice and hold a board meeting within 5 full business days after the adjournment of that meeting. At that meeting the board either certifies the recall or does not.

If the board determines not to certify, it must, within 5 full business days, file an action in a court of competent jurisdiction or file with the department a petition for binding arbitration under the procedures cited in the statute. That is the one context in which an HOA board is affirmatively required to start a proceeding on a short fuse, and boards miss it. Five business days is not long enough to schedule a meeting, consult counsel and draft a petition if the work starts on day four.

Treat a recall petition as an immediate call to counsel, not an agenda item for the next regular meeting. Our guide to board decisions on a short timeline covers how to notice and take a decision quickly and properly.

Preserving the record before you need it

Almost every election dispute turns on documents the association either has or does not have. Section 720.303(4) requires ballots, sign-in sheets, voting proxies, and all other papers and electronic records relating to voting to be maintained for at least 1 year after the date of the election, vote, or meeting, and the official records generally for at least 7 years unless the documents require longer.

Treat the one-year rule as a floor and preserve deliberately. The complete package for a contested election is:

1. The notice as sent, the affidavit of compliance with the 14-day requirement, and the mailing list actually used.
2. The nomination materials, any advance nomination deadline as published, and any candidate submissions.
3. The ledgers relied on to screen candidate eligibility, dated as of the last nomination day.
4. Proxies, outer envelopes, unopened and opened inner envelopes, and ballots, kept physically together.
5. Sign-in sheets, the tally sheets signed by the counters, and the list of rejected ballots with the reason for each.
6. The minutes recording the announcement of the results and the date of the announcement.
7. Board correspondence and management emails about the election, which are subject to their own records analysis.

The moment a challenge is threatened, in writing or otherwise, routine destruction stops. That includes electronic materials, the easiest to lose to an automatic retention setting nobody remembers enabling. Our guide to litigation holds and record preservation walks through how to issue one.

One more discipline is worth building. Write down the procedure you followed while you still remember it. A short memorandum prepared within a week of the election, describing what notice went out and when, how nominations were handled, how eligibility was screened and how ballots were counted, is worth far more than testimony reconstructed eight months later.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes defends and prosecutes association election and recall proceedings before the department and in court, and advises boards on the preservation and response decisions that get made in the first week, when they matter most. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Litigation and ADR page.