Another thing to remember is that you can’t truly vote for the EC by proxy becasue you don’t know who will be standing until the AGM is underway and nominations are called for. The EC can invite people to nominate in addvance and even suggest that they send out information with the AGM agenda stating what their views are on the running of the EC for the next year. But that is all optional and very few ECs do that.
thebuildingmanager is right – choose the person you give your proxy to very carefully. And beware – if you take the lazy option and give your chairman a ‘blind’ proxy, even on the basis that they have done an OK job in the past, you can bet you will not be the only one and you and your fellow owners could be handing one individual an awful lot of power that they may not be particularly well equipped to deal with.
This is a pattern I’ve seen many times. A chairperson who hasn’t done too badly suddenly has enough proxy votes to decide what will and what won’t happen, select their own EC, drive the agenda and, with their handpicked EC loyally in tow, control the flow of information through the EC minutes. AGMs become perfunctory meetings where all the decisions have effectively been made in advance so debate is an irritation and distraction from the main game – getting elected for another year.
It may bring a level of stability but it’s not healthy – either for the strata plan or the individuals involved. So choose your proxy carrier wisely and hope they do the right thing when tough decisions have to be made.
On the question of voting for or against members, the usual procedure is that you have one vote per candidate, per vacancy on the EC. So if you have seven seats, for instance, you have seven votes but you can only give one per candidate. There is no “vote against” but if you really don’t want a candidate in there, make sure as many people as possible are voting for other candidates to fill the vacant seats.