QUESTION:  Myself and another candidate recently ran for election to the board against two incumbent directors. The incumbents won, and one of the scrutineers advised me that we would have won based on the votes of those present at the meeting. The incumbent directors won because many of the owners named a director as their proxy and the named director voted for the incumbent directors. The proxy forms sent out to the owners contained the printed name of a director as each owner’s choice of proxy. Was the proxy vote legitimate?

ANSWER:  The Condominium Act states that a proxy form shall be in the prescribed form: a blank for the unit owner to insert the name of the owner’s choice of proxy.

A proxy form in which the board has inserted the name of a director would appear not to be in the prescribed form.

Further, the prescribed form requires the unit owner who appoints the proxy to also name the candidate — or candidates — for whom the proxy is to vote. The proxy form states that the proxy “may only vote for the individuals whose names are set out above.”

A proxy form that does not name a proxy chosen by the unit owner signing the proxy form, and pursuant to which a proxy named by the board votes for persons not named in the proxy by the unit owner, would appear to be improper, and those votes should have been disregarded.

Again, the people at the meeting wanted the two candidates who were not the incumbents.  The owners wanted change.  But because the Board used proxies, and in a questionable way, they (the Board) were able to ensure that there friends would be re-elected, regardless of what the owners truly wanted!

If the Government wanted to fix condominiums then they need to deal with proxy use and abuse.

There are two easy ways to fix this:

1.  My preferred option is to limit proxies.  Change the Condominium Act to require that no individual can hold more than two proxies, or better yet that everyone from a specific unit can only hold a total of two proxies (basically a married couple can come down with two proxies, not four.)  This limits how many proxies will be used at a meeting, but still allows people to send in a proxy if they cannot attend  meeting.  This seems the fairest option.
2. The other option is to allow proxies only to be used towards quorum – that means the Board can still ensure that quorum is met but it stops the Board from forcing their decisions through.  While this is not as fair for owners who cannot attend a meeting and thus do not get a vote at a meeting, however unless their vote is based on their own opinions and not based on one sided information provided to them at the door by the person soliciting the proxy, the vote is tainted and not necessarily the way the owner would have voted if he/she knew all the facts.

We need to make condominiums democratic, but as long as the Board can use proxies to get their way at an owners’ meeting, we do not have democracy in condominiums.

Now you may be asking, “But how do we remove directors or pass/amend By-laws with a restriction on the number of proxies that will be handed in?”  The answer is simple: reduce the requirement to either option to a 2/3 majority of votes cast.  The means it still takes more than a simple majority to remove a director or make a change to the By-laws, but it means that the people who actually attend the meeting will make the final decision.  And guess what, if the people who attend the meetings are the ones making the decisions then more owners may end up attending the meetings when they know their opinions matter!

The other question raised was: