P.D. from New Haven County writes:
Dear Mister Condo,
I hope you can provide some assistance for me. I am a board member of a 50-unit condo complex. We are having our yearly meeting and will be electing board members. Is it CT law that the unit owner MUST sign their ballot?? I have lived here for 20 years and this was never done before. In other words, an owner’s vote is no longer anonymous. Our new manager insists, but I and others disagree.
Mister Condo replies:
P.D., while I see no harm in having unit owners sign their ballots, I am not aware of any law that requires them to do so. However, the act of signing the ballots would certainly go a long way in preventing voter fraud and authentication of the vote in the event of a contested election. Your documents may detail a particular method of voting that requires signatures but I do not think that is very common. I really don’t see the need or desire to protect the anonymity of a voter. Proxy votes, on the other hand, would most certainly need to be signed in order to be valid. You can ask your new manager to cite the “law” that requires ballots to be signed just for your edification. In the meantime, I wouldn’t hold up any vote in the interests of protecting voter anonymity. Votes are legal records of the association. The more documentation you can provide, the less risk there is for any unit owner to contest the outcome. All the best!