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Tag Archives: ballots

Elections Made Easy

 Want to ensure your next election goes smoothly? Just follow these 11 steps.

The annual meeting was one that homeowners in the Long Beach, Calif., community wouldn’t soon forget – and not for good reasons.  Registration alone took more than an hour.  Homeowner’s didn’t know where to sign in.  Ballots were distributed to residents who had already voted by mail.  Out of frustration, some people began screaming at the board.

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Getting Out The Vote

Door Prizes, Proxies Are Used to Boost Annual Elections

While the election format in a condominium community is pretty much the same as  for any other club or organization, property managers and board members are  looking to make the process easier and increase unit owner participation. Unit  owner participation, in particular, can be a challenge as some condos find it  hard to get enough members for a quorum at their annual meetings.  

 To combat low attendance, some community associations are using raffles, or  offering prizes –drawing names from returned ballots at the annual meeting, or combining the  meeting with a cookout or other social event. Other communities with low  attendance are trying to increase proxy voting. And the use of online voting is  definitely trending upward as more business is conducted by computer.  

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TRYING NOT TO LAUGH

Some sources trace the origin of the word “idiot” to politics.  No, seriously.  Some scholars maintain that the ancient Greeks took the ideals of democracy pretty seriously, and imposed upon citizens both the right and the obligation to vote in all elections and referenda.  A citizen who did not vote or who was not a regular orator in the citizen assemblies was publicly “marked” and labeled idiotai: A person who put his own interests over those of society as a whole.  Over time, the word idiot evolved to mean something different, a half-with or an utterly senseless, foolish individual. 

Understandably, being “publicly marked and labeled as idiotai, ”was not an ideal development for an upstanding, status-conscious and propertied citizen of Athens or one of the other city-states.  Sometimes, however, it was unavoidable.  There were no planes, trains or automobiles in ancient Greece, and when a citizen found himself away from his home city when it was time to vote, he was looking idiotai square in the eye.  To avoid becoming labeled the village idiotai of his hometown, the citizen had to find a way to vote when he was away.  The solution was to commission someone to vote on his behalf.  Thus, was the proxy born. 

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