The Mistakes Florida HOA Boards Make in Elections, and How to Avoid Them

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

Most failed HOA elections in Florida fail for procedural reasons, not because anyone cheated. A board follows a checklist written for a condominium, or follows a practice the community has used for twenty years without checking whether the bylaws still say that, and a member challenges the result within the 60-day window. The errors below account for the great majority of the problems we see, and every one of them is avoidable with a calendar and a careful reading of the documents.

Mistake one: running it like a condominium election

This is the error that produces the others. The Florida Condominium Act builds an election procedure into the statute: a first notice well in advance, a deadline for candidates to give written notice of intent, a second notice mailed with the ballot and candidate information sheets, a proxy prohibition, and a minimum participation threshold. Anyone who works in condominiums knows that sequence.

None of it is in Chapter 720. Section 720.306(9)(a) says elections of directors must be conducted in accordance with the procedures set forth in the governing documents. The Legislature laid down a handful of rules and left the rest to the declaration and bylaws. There is no statutory first notice, no statutory candidate deadline, and no statutory ballot package.

Mistake two: not reading what the bylaws actually require

Because Chapter 720 delegates the procedure, the bylaws are the operative document, and they are often forty years old, amended three times, and inconsistent with themselves. Boards rely on what the association has always done rather than the text, and "always done" often started when a manager who left in 2009 misread a paragraph.

Pull the election provisions every year and answer these in writing before you send anything out:

1. How are directors nominated, and is there an advance nomination process? If there is, section 720.306(9)(a) says the association is not required to allow nominations from the floor.
2. How many directors are elected this year, and are terms staggered? Staggered terms buried in an old amendment are a classic source of a void election.
3. May absent members vote, and if so, by proxy, by written ballot, or both? Chapter 720 does not answer this. The documents do.
4. What is the quorum for a members meeting? Section 720.306(1)(a) sets 30 percent of the total voting interests unless a lower number is in the bylaws.
5. Who counts the ballots, and do the documents require a committee, an impartial teller, or the presence of candidates?
6. Does the declaration or a class-voting provision give different parcels different voting weight?

Where the documents are genuinely ambiguous, resolve it with counsel before the election rather than after. An election run on a reasonable, documented, counsel-reviewed reading of an ambiguous bylaw is defensible. The same election run on an assumption is not. Our guide to how Chapter 720 works covers the relationship between the statute and the documents.

Mistake three: notice defects

Notice is where most challenges land, because it is objective and easy for a member to prove. Section 720.306(5) requires actual notice of all membership meetings to all parcel owners and members, mailed, delivered, or electronically transmitted not less than 14 days before the meeting. Evidence of compliance is made by an affidavit executed by the person providing the notice, filed among the official records.

Four points follow. Fourteen days is a floor; if your bylaws require 30, you owe 30. The statute says actual notice, so posting alone is not enough, although the association may also adopt a procedure for conspicuously posting and repeatedly broadcasting the notice and agenda. Electronic transmission reaches only members who have consented in the required manner, so a mixed list is normal. And the affidavit gets executed and filed at the time, not reconstructed a year later.

Do not confuse members meeting notice with board meeting notice. Under section 720.303(2)(c)1., board meeting notices must specifically identify agenda items and be posted conspicuously at least 48 hours in advance, except in an emergency. Under section 720.303(2)(c)2., a meeting considering special assessments or amendments to rules regarding parcel use carries a 14-day notice plus posting. The organizational board meeting after the annual meeting is a board meeting and needs board meeting notice. Our guide to meeting notices and agendas covers the differences.

Mistake four: mishandling proxies and ballots

Chapter 720 does not ban proxies in the election of directors the way the Condominium Act does. Whether absent members may vote at all, and by what method, is a question for your documents. Once they permit a proxy, section 720.306(8)(a) sets requirements that are easy to fail: to be valid a proxy must be dated, must state the date, time, and place of the meeting for which it is given, and must be signed by the authorized person who executed it. It is effective only for that meeting, as it may lawfully be adjourned and reconvened, and expires automatically 90 days after that date. It is revocable at any time at the pleasure of the person who executes it.

That last point is the one boards forget. An owner who signed a proxy in October and appears in November has revoked it by showing up and voting. The check-in table needs the proxy log in front of it, not in a binder in the office.

Where the documents permit members not in attendance to vote for directors by secret ballot, section 720.306(8)(b) requires the envelope procedure: the ballot goes into an inner envelope with no identifying markings, and that envelope goes inside an outer envelope bearing identifying information reflecting the name of the member and the lot or parcel voted. Eligibility is verified from the outer envelope; the ballot inside stays anonymous.

• Open outer envelopes and verify eligibility first. Only after an outer envelope is accepted does the inner envelope go into the ballot box.
• Do not open inner envelopes as you go. Open them together, after check-in closes, in front of whoever the documents or the board designate to count.
• A ballot in an unsigned or unidentifiable outer envelope cannot be verified. Set it aside intact rather than discarding it, and note it on the tally sheet.
• Anything written on the inner envelope destroys the secrecy the statute protects. Say so in the instructions you send out.
• Keep proxies, envelopes and ballots physically together with the tally sheets from the moment counting ends.

Our overview of ballots, proxies and voting certificates covers the paperwork in more detail, including voting certificates for parcels owned by more than one person or by an entity.

Mistake five: assuming a quorum problem stops everything

Section 720.306(1)(a) provides that, unless a lower number is stated in the bylaws, a quorum at a members meeting is 30 percent of the total voting interests. Many Florida HOA bylaws do set a lower number, and the statute permits it, so check before assuming 30 percent.

But quorum does not always matter to the election, and boards get this backwards in both directions. Section 720.306(9)(a) provides that an election is not required unless more candidates are nominated than vacancies exist. Where there are an equal number of or fewer qualified candidates than vacancies, and floor nominations are not required by the statute or the bylaws, write-in nominations are not permitted and those candidates commence service regardless of whether a quorum is attained.

So a community that cannot get 30 percent of its owners to respond does not thereby lose its board. If the seats are uncontested, the candidates are seated. What the association loses without a quorum is the ability to transact the other business on the annual meeting agenda, which matters when the agenda includes a document amendment. Keep the two questions separate and plan the agenda accordingly.

Where quorum is chronically short, the fix is usually in the documents: a bylaw amendment lowering the members meeting quorum, or an absentee ballot procedure. Raise either with counsel in the summer, not the week before the meeting.

Mistake six: getting nominations wrong

Section 720.306(9)(a) allows a member to nominate himself or herself at the meeting where the election is held, then adds a qualifier: if the election process allows candidates to be nominated in advance, the association is not required to allow nominations at the meeting.

That qualifier cuts both ways. An association whose bylaws provide no advance nomination process must take nominations from the floor; closing them two weeks early there is a defect. An association with a real advance nomination process may close nominations at its deadline and refuse floor nominations, and a board that reopens the floor "to be fair" has departed from its own procedure, which is a defect of its own.

Pick the route your documents take and follow it exactly. Publish the deadline in the notice, apply it to everyone, and do not make an exception at the meeting because a popular owner missed it.

Eligibility screening belongs at the nomination stage, not the counting stage. The delinquency test in section 720.306(9)(b) is measured on the last day a person could be nominated, and the statute says an ineligible person may not be listed on the ballot. Our guide to who may serve on an HOA board covers the full test.

Mistake seven: careless counting and announcing

Except as otherwise provided in the governing documents, section 720.306(9)(a) provides that directors must be elected by a plurality of the votes cast by eligible voters. Plurality, not majority. With five candidates for three seats, the three highest vote-getters win and none needs to cross 50 percent. A board that calls a runoff because nobody got a majority has invented a requirement the statute does not impose.

Count in a way you could reproduce later:

1. Announce the count procedure before counting begins, and let candidates or their observers watch if the documents allow.
2. Verify eligibility from the sign-in sheets and outer envelopes before any inner envelope is opened.
3. Use a written tally sheet, signed and dated by everyone who counted, showing votes for each candidate and every rejected ballot with the reason.
4. Announce the result at the meeting and record it, with the date, in the minutes. The 60-day challenge window in section 720.306(9)(a) runs from that announcement.
5. Do not adjust the count afterward on the basis of a phone call. If something is genuinely wrong, that is a question for counsel before anything changes.

Chapter 720 does not address a tie. If the documents do not break it, raise it with counsel promptly rather than resolving it at the table by coin flip.

Mistake eight: throwing away the election materials

Section 720.303(4) requires the association to maintain official records for at least 7 years unless the documents require longer, with a shorter period that matters here: ballots, sign-in sheets, voting proxies, and all other papers and electronic records relating to voting by parcel owners must be maintained for at least 1 year after the date of the election, vote, or meeting.

One year is the floor, not a target. The window to challenge is 60 days, but an arbitration filed on day 59 will not be decided on day 60, and a related claim can outlive the one-year mark. Keep the entire election file intact for at least a year, and if anyone raises any question about the election, preserve everything until counsel says otherwise. Our guide to litigation holds and record preservation explains how, including electronic materials.

Keep the whole file together: notice and affidavit, the mailing list used, nomination materials and candidate submissions, the ledgers used for eligibility screening, proxies, outer and inner envelopes, ballots, sign-in sheets, tally sheets and minutes. An association that can produce that package usually ends a dispute quickly. One that produces three of those items usually does not.

A short sequence that avoids most of this

Run the same sequence every year and most of these errors become impossible.

1. In the off-season, read the election provisions with counsel and write a one-page procedure for your community. Revisit it after each legislative session.
2. Build the calendar from your bylaws and the 14-day notice in section 720.306(5), not from a condominium template.
3. Publish the nomination deadline and the delinquency rule in advance, in writing.
4. Screen eligibility as of the last nomination day and keep the ledgers.
5. Send notice, execute and file the affidavit, and keep the mailing list you used.
6. Verify, count and record in writing, and announce the result on the record.
7. Box the file and calendar the retention date.

If a challenge does come, the 60-day clock and the arbitration track are covered in our guide to disputed HOA elections.

Contact Hamilton Mikes

Hamilton Mikes reviews HOA election procedures against the governing documents, builds the annual election calendar with boards and managers, and handles the problems when an election is questioned. Getting the procedure right in August costs far less than rerunning an election in February. Call 239-594-7227 or visit our Corporate Governance page.