HOA Voting Rules in Hawaii

Yes, once the board is authorized to allow it. HRS §514B-121(e) lets the board authorize electronic meetings, electronic voting and mail voting in its sole discretion during a declared state of emergency; for a meeting noticed while an emergency was in effect if held within sixty days of that notice; under a special meeting rule adopted at an association meeting; when approved no less than three months and no more than eighteen months beforehand by written consent of a majority of unit owners or a majority vote at an association meeting; or whenever the declaration or bylaws already authorize it. For any such vote the voting deadline must fall within sixty days of the date notice was first sent, and the association must implement reasonable measures to verify that each person permitted to vote is a member or a member's proxy. Mail voting expressly includes ballots sent or received by mail, courier, or electronic transmission where the transmission is a complete reproduction of the original.

Chapter 514B sets no quorum, so the number comes from your declaration or bylaws — and no Hawaii statute reduces it at an adjourned meeting. HRS §514B-121(b) requires meetings to be run under the most recent edition of Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised, which carries the same quorum into an adjourned meeting. Online voting can help reach quorum by making participation easy for off-island owners.

Yes. The Hawaii Real Estate Commission provides oversight, education, and dispute resolution services for condominium associations under HRS §514B. The Commission can investigate complaints and mediate disputes, including those related to election procedures.

Quorum in Hawaii: Chapter 514B does not set a quorum. There is no quorum section anywhere in the Condominium Property Act, and HRS §514B-108(b) does not even list quorum among the items the bylaws must cover, so the figure comes from the declaration or bylaws and no Hawaii statute reduces it at an adjourned meeting. HRS §514B-121(b) requires all association meetings to be conducted under the most recent edition of Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised, which carries an adjourned meeting forward at the same quorum rather than a lower one. Planned community associations incorporated under the Hawaii Nonprofit Corporations Act fall back on HRS §414D-111(a), where ten per cent of the votes entitled to be cast is the default unless the articles or bylaws provide a higher or lower quorum. 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.

Fourteen days is a statutory floor in Hawaii, not a bylaw preference. Under HRS §514B-121(d), notice must go out no less than fourteen days before any association meeting, and it must be hand-delivered, sent prepaid by United States mail to the mailing address of each unit or another address the owner designates in writing, or — at the owner's written election — sent by electronic mail to the address the owner designates. The notice must state the date, time, and place of the meeting and the items on the agenda, including the general nature and rationale of any proposed amendment to the declaration or bylaws and any proposal to remove a board member. Planned community associations have their own statutory notice, not a governing-document rule: HRS §421J-3.5(a) also requires not less than fourteen days, given as the bylaws provide or by two or more of hand delivery, United States mail, electronic mail, or posting the notice in its entirety on a part of the association's website accessible to all members. 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.

Hawaii sets proxy rules by statute, not by the bylaws. Under the Condominium Property Act (HRS §514B-123), a proxy is valid only for the meeting it names and that meeting's adjournments, must be delivered to the secretary or managing agent no later than 4:30 p.m. Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time on the second business day before the meeting, and must contain at least the association's name, the meeting date, the printed names and signatures of the owners giving it, the units covered, the proxy holder's name, and the date given. A proxy may be revoked only by actual notice of revocation to the secretary or managing agent, and a proxy is void if it purports to be revocable without notice. Planned community associations follow a nearly identical rule under HRS §421J-4, which opens with the requirement that a proxy "shall be in writing and shall be valid for only a specified meeting of the association and any adjournments of that meeting." Because a Hawaii proxy dies with the meeting, associations that lean on proxies re-paper them every election; online voting lets off-island owners cast their own ballot instead. 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.