Co-op election services
vote.direct runs cooperative board elections from $199 for a digital election of up to 100 members — we build the ballot, load the member roster, send the notices, run the reminders, watch quorum, close the vote, tally it, and issue the result certificate with the audit package.
Setup and launch alone is $99, mailed packets for the members who will not vote online are $6.00 each, and we need 10 days before ballots open.
Quick answer: what a managed co-op election costs
Four ways to hand the work over, priced in public. Every price includes the platform fee for up to 100 members, so it is not charged twice.
| Service | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Setup & Launch | $99 | We build the ballot, load the roster, write and send the notices, and hand you a live election. Platform flat-rate fee included, up to 100 voters. You run the election from open onward. |
| Full Managed Election | $199 | Everything in Setup & Launch, then we run it: reminders, quorum, voter support, close, tally, certificate. A digital election — email and SMS ballots, no mailed packets — of up to 100 voters, platform flat-rate fee included. Give us 10 days before ballots open. Add packets below, or ask for a quote above 100 voters. |
| Managed + Mailed Packets | $199 plus $6.00 per packet | A full managed election where the members who need paper get a printed packet with a postage-paid return envelope, and their returned ballots land in the same tally. $6.00 per packet, charged on the packets actually mailed. The $6.00 covers the trip both ways: the packet out, and a return envelope that already has the postage paid on it, so the member never buys a stamp. There is no separate postage line on your invoice. A mailed ballot counts when it reaches our election address by the close date in your notice — received by, not postmarked by, so nobody has to adjudicate a smudged postmark after the count has started. We work backwards from your close date at kickoff and give you the mail-by date to print on the packet. Paper and online ballots are counted together. |
| Managed + Inspector of Elections | $499 | A full managed election where vote.direct also serves as your inspector of elections — Colorado, Nevada, Florida, Texas and Arizona only. Not available in California: Cal. Civ. Code §5110(b) bars a vendor under contract to the association from serving as inspector. We will help you find an independent one instead. |
| Above 100 members | Quoted | Same scope, priced on your roster. The self-serve platform itself is quoted above 1,550 voters. |
We need 10 days before ballots open. This page is general information about a service, not legal advice about your cooperative.
What we do for a cooperative election
The same division of labor we publish for every managed election, with the co-op version of each row spelled out. The last three rows are the point of the table: a managed election does not make vote.direct your nominating committee or your counsel.
| Task | Who does it | In a co-op election that means |
|---|---|---|
| Ballot build | vote.direct | Seats by class or by district, cumulative voting where your certificate authorizes it, and the bylaw amendments that ride on the same ballot. |
| Roster load and dedupe | vote.direct | Your share register or member ledger, with the vote weight per member and the record date that freezes eligibility. |
| Notice drafting and send | vote.direct | The notice your bylaws and your state cooperative act require, sent inside the window they require it in. |
| Reminder cadence | vote.direct | Only to the members who have not voted yet, never to the ones who already have. |
| Voter support inbox | vote.direct | The shareholder who cannot find the email writes to us, not to your managing agent or your board secretary. |
| Quorum monitoring | vote.direct | Measured against your real rule — a majority of shares behaves nothing like a headcount, and we tell you early when it is not going to be met. |
| Close and tally | vote.direct | Weighted or unweighted, per class and per district, counted the way your governing documents say. |
| Result certificate and audit package | vote.direct | One result certificate for the election, plus the tamper-evident audit package your minutes can point at. |
| Paper packets (optional) | vote.direct | For the members who will not vote online. Returned ballots land in the same tally as the web ones. |
| Inspector of elections (optional) | Either | We can serve in Colorado, Nevada, Florida, Texas and Arizona. Anywhere else, appoint your own and we give them a private page with the roster, the frozen tally, and the certification to sign. |
| Nominations and candidate statements | Your board | Your nominating committee runs the nominations. We publish exactly what it hands us. |
| Legal review | Your board | Your cooperative’s counsel. We build to the rule you give us; we do not give legal advice. |
| Adopting election rules | Your board | The board adopts them. We build the ballot to match what was adopted. |
Three kinds of cooperative, three different elections
“Co-op voting” is one phrase covering elections that share a principle and almost nothing else. Find your column; every row is something that changes what we build.
| Housing co-op | Agricultural co-op | Worker co-op | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who votes | Shareholders of record on the record date. One household can hold several apartments, and one apartment can have several names on the stock certificate. | Producer-members. Some co-ops restrict the ballot to members who actually delivered during the marketing year. | Worker-members who have finished the probationary period their bylaws define. |
| How a vote is weighted | Usually one vote per share, so a two-bedroom outweighs a studio. New York BCL §612 gives one vote per share unless the certificate of incorporation provides otherwise. | Usually one member, one vote. Some cooperatives weight instead by patronage volume, which means the weights change every year. | One member, one vote, with no weighting at all. |
| Who is on the ballot | Directors, commonly a staggered class each year rather than the whole board, plus assessments and bylaw amendments on the same ballot. | District directors — a seat that only the members in that district may vote on — alongside at-large seats. | Directors, and in some cooperatives the manager as well; some questions are put to every member rather than to the board. |
| What usually goes wrong | Quorum. New York BCL §608 makes a majority of shares the default, and proxy collection is what normally gets a co-op there. | Reach. Members are spread across counties, and the ballot has to find them during a season when they are not at a desk. | The roster moves. People are hired and leave between the notice and the close, so eligibility has to be frozen at a date everyone agreed on. |
| What we need from you | The share register with shares per apartment, the certificate of incorporation, and the record date. | The member ledger with each member’s district, and the patronage figures if your articles weight by volume. | The member list with member-since dates, and the bylaw text that defines when a worker becomes a member. |
One member, one vote — or one vote per share?
A worker co-op counts people. A New York housing co-op counts shares: BCL §612 gives one vote for each share standing in the shareholder's name unless the certificate of incorporation provides otherwise, so a two-bedroom outweighs a studio and the tally is never a headcount. An agricultural co-op is usually one member, one vote, but some weight by patronage volume, which means the weights are re-derived every year.
We take the weight from the roster you give us, read it back to the board before ballots go out, and show quorum against the rule that actually applies — for a New York co-op, BCL §608 makes a majority of shares the default.
Member classes and district directors
Large agricultural and electric cooperatives elect directors by district: only the members in a district may vote on that district's seat, and the at-large seats sit on the same ballot. Housing co-ops hit the same shape when a sponsor class or a commercial unit elects its own director, and worker co-ops when a probationary tier votes on some questions but not all.
A seat can be restricted so that only the members of a class or district see it. The restriction comes from a column in the roster, so the ballot enforces exactly what your bylaws say and nothing we guessed.
What the statutes do and do not say
- Pennsylvania Act 115 of 2022 (effective May 2023) explicitly authorizes electronic voting for cooperatives, condominiums and planned communities — one of the few statutes that names cooperatives outright. Pennsylvania rules
- New York housing co-ops are corporations under the Business Corporation Law. BCL §609 governs proxies. BCL §609 concerns how a shareholder may authorize a proxy, including by qualifying electronic transmission. It is not a blanket approval of every direct online-balloting procedure — read it against your certificate of incorporation, your bylaws, and current advice from New York co-op counsel.
- Agricultural cooperatives sit under their state agricultural cooperative act and the Capper-Volstead Act, 7 U.S.C. §§291–292, which gives farmer-owned marketing associations a limited antitrust exemption. Your articles and that act, not us, decide whether the ballot is one member one vote or weighted by patronage.
- Everywhere: your bylaws and articles come first, and the platform records what happened. They do not turn an election your documents did not authorize into one that they did.
Pricing
A full managed cooperative election is $199 for up to 100 members, plus $6.00 for each member who needs a mailed packet. Here is what that sits next to.
NYC co-op election, the traditional way
$3,000–$8,000
Election vendor, legal review and mailing, per our NYC co-op guide
Where this number comes from →Traditional 200-unit paper election
$2,000–$5,000
Printing, postage, counting and administration, per our paper-vs-digital cost breakdown
Where this number comes from →If you would rather run it yourselves
The same platform is self-serve at a flat rate per election, from $4.99. Nobody from vote.direct touches the roster, the notices or the tally — your board does all of it, at these prices.
Promotional pricing through August 31, 2026.
Questions co-op boards ask
Tell us about your cooperative's election
Send us your bylaws, your member list and the date you need results. We will tell you what we can run, what it costs, and what your board still has to do — before you commit to anything. We need 10 days before ballots open.