HOA Voting Rules in Connecticut

Yes. Under CGS §47-252(a)(1), unless prohibited or limited by your declaration or bylaws, unit owners may vote by electronic or paper ballot, before or at a meeting held in person, electronically, or both. CGS §47-252(d) also lets the association run a vote with no meeting at all by delivering a paper or electronic ballot to every unit owner. Check your declaration and bylaws for a prohibition, because that is the only thing that takes the option away.

Under the CIOA (CGS §47-251(a)), the default quorum is twenty per cent of the votes in the association, present in person or by proxy at the beginning of the meeting, unless your BYLAWS otherwise provide. The override lives in the bylaws, not the declaration — a board that checks its declaration for it will not find it.

Election disputes in Connecticut are typically resolved through civil litigation in Superior Court. Some associations may have arbitration or mediation clauses in their governing documents. Comprehensive election records, including voter verification and timestamped ballots, provide essential evidence in dispute resolution.

Quorum in Connecticut: Under CGS §47-251(a), unless the BYLAWS otherwise provide, a quorum is present throughout any meeting of the unit owners if persons entitled to cast twenty per cent of the votes in the association are present in person or by proxy at the beginning of the meeting. CIOA contains no reduced-quorum-on-adjournment rule. For a vote conducted without a meeting, CGS §47-252(d)(6) supplies the test instead: approval by ballot is valid only if the number of votes cast by ballot equals or exceeds the quorum that would have been required at a meeting. For the executive board, CGS §47-251(b) sets quorum at a majority of the votes on that board. If a vote falls short, most bylaws allow the meeting to be adjourned and reconvened, often at a reduced threshold on the second attempt. Check your declaration for the exact procedure, because the fallback rule is usually in your governing documents rather than in statute. Online voting is the most direct fix: members vote from a phone or laptop instead of attending in person, and Vote.Direct tracks quorum progress live and reminds the members who haven't voted yet.

Under CGS §47-250(a)(3), an association must notify unit owners of the time, date and place of each annual and special meeting not less than ten days or more than sixty days before the meeting date, and the notice must state the items on the agenda, including the general nature of any proposed amendment to the declaration or bylaws, any budget changes, and any proposal to remove an officer or member of the executive board. Notice may be given by any means described in CGS §47-261c: hand delivery, United States mail or a commercially reasonable delivery service to the mailing address of each unit, electronic means where the unit owner has given the association an electronic address, or any other method reasonably calculated to provide notice. Notice is effective when sent. Executive board meetings run on a shorter track: CGS §47-250(b)(5) requires at least five days' notice to each board member and to the unit owners, stating the time, date, place and agenda. Your governing documents can require more notice than the statutory floor, never less. Count the notice window backwards from your meeting date before you open voting, and keep a copy of the notice and its delivery date with the election record.

Connecticut permits proxies but caps how much of an association any one person may carry. Under CGS §47-252(c), except as the declaration or bylaws otherwise provide, votes allocated to a unit may be cast pursuant to a directed or undirected proxy duly executed by a unit owner; a proxy is void if it is not dated or purports to be revocable without notice; a proxy terminates one year after its date unless it specifies a shorter term; and an owner may revoke a proxy only by actual notice of revocation to the person presiding over the meeting. The distinctive Connecticut rule is CGS §47-252(c)(7): no person may cast votes representing more than fifteen per cent of the votes in the association pursuant to undirected proxies. If the association hands out a proxy form, CGS §47-252(c)(2) requires it to leave a blank space for the owner to name the proxy holder. Online voting sidesteps the cap entirely, because every owner casts their own ballot and no one is carrying anyone else's votes. Proxies exist mainly to solve an attendance problem. When members can cast a verified ballot online during a multi-day voting window, most communities find proxy use drops sharply, along with the disputes about whether a given proxy was valid.