Academy/Membership & Annual Meetings
Eligible voters
Who actually gets to cast a vote for a lot or unit, and who doesn't.
Eligible voters are the association's members, generally the recorded owner of each lot or unit, one vote per unit unless your declaration says otherwise. Joint owners, trusts, and entity-owned units complicate who counts as the eligible voter, and the association cannot vote units it owns itself. Your declaration and state statute set the details.
Who counts as an eligible voter
Membership in an HOA is tied to owning a lot or unit, not to living in it. In most associations, each lot or unit carries one vote, though your declaration sets the actual allocation, some communities weight votes by unit size or assessment share instead. The declaration and bylaws control who counts as a member and how many votes attach to each unit, so start there before assuming "one owner, one vote."
How votes are allocated in your community, and whether it matches the simple one-unit-one-vote picture, varies. Check your declaration and bylaws.
When one unit has more than one owner
Plenty of lots are titled to more than one person: a married couple, siblings who inherited the house, business partners. If the co-owners disagree about how to vote, one of them cannot simply show up and cast the whole vote over the others' objection.
"the votes allocated to that unit may be cast only in accordance with the agreement of a majority in interest of the owners, unless the declaration expressly provides otherwise."
Source: Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, section 3 110, West Virginia Legislature
For the full mechanics of how that agreement works in practice, see Joint owners.
Trust-titled and company-owned units
Many owners hold title through a living trust or an LLC rather than their own name, and that changes who is actually entitled to vote.
"the law identifies the trustee of a trust as the owner, and the trustee therefore holds legal title to trust property."
Source: California HOA: Who Qualifies as an Owner Fact Sheet, MBK Chapman
This is California practitioner guidance, not a nationwide rule: a trust cannot hold title in its own name there, so the trustee is treated as the member who votes, while a corporation or LLC may appoint a representative to vote in its place. Whether your own state follows this same pattern is a question for your declaration and a local attorney.
See Trust-owned properties and LLC/company-owned properties for more.
What can take a unit off the voter rolls
Some exclusions are settled. Others are not, and boards routinely get this wrong.
"No votes allocated to a unit owned by the association may be cast."
Source: Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, section 3 110, West Virginia Legislature
That covers a unit the association itself took back, through foreclosure or otherwise. It does not settle a much more common question: whether a delinquent owner can be denied a ballot at all. Some states and some governing documents address this, others do not. Ask your board's attorney whether your state or your own declaration allows withholding a ballot for delinquency before you assume either answer.
Check yourself
Answer before you read the explanation, recalling it is what makes it stick.
A lot is titled to three siblings who inherited it together, and they can't agree on how to vote. Under the model act default, what happens?
The association took back a unit through foreclosure and still holds title to it. Can the board cast that unit's vote at the annual meeting?
A member's lot is titled to a family trust rather than to the member personally. Under California practitioner guidance, who is treated as the actual voting member?
Sources
- Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, section 3 110 (Voting, Proxies), West Virginia Legislature
- California HOA: Who Qualifies as an Owner Fact Sheet, MBK Chapman
Membership & Annual Meetings
Next, see how these votes get counted once the meeting starts: Owner voting rights.
Whether joint owners, trustees, or entity representatives may vote, and whether a delinquent owner can be denied a ballot, varies by state statute and by your own declaration and bylaws.