Vote HOA Now System Features

With its many features, benefits, and value Vote HOA Now offers boards and managers a secure and cost-effective online voting experience.

Full-Service Management

• Full-service Setup and Management – a vote manager is assigned to each association who will setup, manage, and provide results of the vote or survey
• Personalized Voting Site – each association has a personalized voting site with an association picture, graphic, or logo

Emailed Invitations and Reminders

• 24/7 Access to Online Ballot – owners can vote from any device, anywhere they have internet access
• Invitation to Vote – emailed invitations are sent to owners asking them to register and vote; message is customizable and typically includes dynamic information such as owner name, registration code, and a link to the voting site
• Reminder Emails – the vote manager will schedule and send reminder emails to owners that have not voted; these messages typically include a direct link to the online ballot
• Confirmation Emails – owners receive confirmations both online and via email when they register and submit their vote

Voter Registration

• Owner/Voter Management – a spreadsheet of your owner information is imported to the voting system, changes are made by updating the spreadsheet and re-importing it
• Voter Authentication/Registration Code – the voter registers using their personal registration code – either a random registration code we create, or other identifying number provided
• Property Weighting – for owners that have more than one property they can have one account that is weighted for all the properties they own so they only register and vote one time and it counts for all their properties; also used for condominiums when the sizes of the units have different vote percentages

Ballot Features

• Online Ballot – candidate elections and issue votes (last years’ meeting minutes, IRS ruling, etc.) can be added to a single ballot or separate ballots
• Candidate Elections – candidate biographies and pictures can be included on the ballot
• Number of Openings – the number of open board positions is set and therefore limits the number of candidates a voter can select
• Write-in Candidates – when selecting this option, write-in spaces equal to the number of open positions will be on the ballot
• Issues and Measures Ballots – these are items that require a vote of the community (amendments, budget approval, etc.); there can be multiple issues on a single ballot
• Abstain – an optional choice allowing a voter to abstain from voting on an issue
• Supporting Document – a PDF for additional information can also be included on the ballot, such as the meeting notice, meeting agenda, prior meeting minutes, document amendments, and candidate biographies
• Quorum Only Option – use the Quorum Only option to give owners the option to vote for quorum only (not voting on candidates or issues)
• Proxy Options – two main proxy options are available: instructed/directed and uninstructed/non-directed; either of these options allow you to have one designated proxy recipient, e.g., The Secretary of the Board and/or a write in proxy

Vote Tabulation and Results

• Automatic Vote Tabulation – vote results are tabulated in real-time – no error-prone manual processes
• Vote Results – the vote manager sends weekly the quorum/vote count updates only; final voting results are sent only to the SPC with detailed information of total number of votes, percent voted, candidate or issue vote tallies, and spreadsheets of the results
• Spreadsheet of Full Results – shows full information including name, email address, time/date they voted, IP address of the computer voted from, and more; Note: for Secret Votes some data will be excluded from these reports
• Additional Spreadsheet Reports – reports include Who Voted, Who Didn’t Vote, and Proxies

Additional Features/Services

• Entering Paper Ballots
  If you have an owner that returns a paper ballot, our system has a feature that will allow you to enter the paper ballots into the electronic system (if the vote is NOT secret). The benefits to this are that the paper vote is tallied with the online votes (making the final tallying simpler), the owner will stop getting voting emails, and the owner will not be able to also vote online.
• Voter Weighting
  If you have an owner that owns multiple properties, or your votes are based on a percentage then you need voter weighting. With voter weighting we set the weight on an owner's registration code equal to the number of votes they get. If a company or individual owns 18 lots they only need to vote once rather than 18 times.
• Cumulative Voting
  With cumulative voting when you have an election with multiple open board positions voters could assign all their votes to one or more candidates. For example, if there are 5 open board positions a voter could assign all 5 votes to a single candidate or distribute any combination of the 5 votes to the candidates available on the ballot.
• Vote Auditing
  Want the results verified? We will examine the voting results to look for voting from duplicate IP addresses. It is possible to legitimately have duplicate IPs. In the event of duplicates, we will look to see if the results are swayed in any direction and report our findings to the designated official at the association or management company.

Surveys/Opinion Polls

• Community Feedback – create a survey/opinion poll to get feedback from your community
• Direct Link – a survey can use an encrypted link, so owners don’t have to register (makes it faster and easier to participate); when the link is used it cannot be used again so results cannot be skewed by someone taking a survey multiple times
• Question Types – single choice, multiple choice, or ranking; questions can be set to either required or optional
• Comments Box – use when wanting an open-ended response

Safeguarding Personal Information

• Any and all owner data collected by Vote HOA Now in the context of providing e-voting administration services to the Association shall not be used for any other purposes during or after the term of the e-voting agreement.
• Owner data obtained by Vote HOA Now shall be collected, used and disclosed, as well as processed, handled, stored and destroyed in accordance with applicable privacy laws or such legislation as may be applicable from time to time.
• Vote HOA Now will take all reasonable precautions to prevent owner data from being accessible by any unauthorized person. Owner data is thus protected by appropriate physical, organizational and technical security safeguards, to prevent unauthorized use, disclosure or dissemination of such information. Please see FAQ for Privacy Breach policy.

Security Features

• Transport Layer Security (TLS) – TLS is used to encrypt the connection between the voters’ web browser and the voting site
• Authentication – each voter's internet address along with the date/time they voted is recorded; the system also prevents voters from casting multiple votes for the same ballot initiative
• Application Security – the Vote HOA Now software application is hosted in Databank, a SSAE 16 SOC 1 Type II certified data center, in the tier level 4 private cloud datacenter – guaranteeing 99.99% uptime; the infrastructure, with 24/7 surveillance, is secured and managed by highly trained and certified engineers and requires a badge and biometric security to access