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Hello,
recently a zoom meeting was arranged as an egm. The meeting was to determine colour for 4 terrace houses in a scheme that includes appartments. The committee vote farmed with 11 friends via ‘pre-meeting electronic voting’ then boycotted the zoom meeting. Are there any anti-vote farming rules with ‘electronic voting’ they don’t seem subject to the same 5% rule as proxies. There were only 3 people that turned up to the zoom out of 44 lots. This was because most people aren’t concerned with the painting of 4 houses they don’t live in. I managed to get 12 neighbours after the meeting to arrange a new egm.
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This isn’t really proxy farming – at worst it’s campaigning or caucussing. In proxy farming, owners were persuaded, tricked or bullied into handing over their proxy votes. In a block not a million miles from where I sit now, the chair used to ask owners who didn’t want to go to the AGM how they wanted to vote on the few issues that they cared about, then he’d diligently follow their wishes … but add their undirected votes to his tally.
One year he had more votes than everybody else at the meeting put together – and this was a huge building.
What has happened here is that the antis have gathered up enough support but these are real votes (unless they are filling in blank votes, which I think may be illegal).
Your best way forward is to persuade a majority of owners that there is a financial detriment in not painting these townhouses and that failure to do so is a false economy. That usually does the trick and you can then encourage them to vote on your side.
Calm and considered persuasion, with no talk of vote farming or conspiracies, will get you there.
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Just another thought, Section 15 and Section 17 of the Regulations lay out how electronic voting should be dealt with. That might be your starting point for next time.
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