Condo - DBPR Election Brochure

The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation publishes plain-language guidance for condominium associations and unit owners, including material on how board elections must be run. If your association is heading into an election, it is worth reading alongside your own governing documents rather than instead of them.

Here is what that guidance covers, and what each item means in practice.

1. Eligibility. Who may run, and what disqualifies a candidate. In Florida that includes being more than ninety days delinquent in assessments, certain felony convictions without restoration of civil rights, and suspension or removal by the Division.

2. Notice of election. The first notice goes out at least sixty days before the election. It carries the election date and the deadline for submitting a written notice of intent to run.

3. Candidate information sheet. Candidates may submit a one-page sheet about themselves, which the association mails out with the second notice.

4. Voting. Board elections use an inner and outer envelope, so the ballot stays anonymous while the association can still verify who voted. Proxies cannot be used to elect directors.

5. Inspectors of election. Who counts and verifies the ballots, and the restrictions on who may serve in that role.

6. Term lengths. How long directors serve, and how staggered terms work where the bylaws provide for them.

7. The participation threshold. A quorum of the membership is not required to conduct the board election. At least twenty percent of eligible voters must cast a ballot for the election to be valid.

8. Election disputes. How challenges to the process or the result are handled, including arbitration or mediation through the Division.

9. Turnover. How control of the association passes from the developer to the unit owners.

10. Common questions. The questions owners ask most often, answered in plain language.

The Division publishes this material in both English and Spanish.

If your board wants help running an election that holds up, the work starts earlier than most boards expect. The election calendar and the twenty percent rule explains what the sixty day notice sets in motion, and why quiet, uncontested communities are the ones most likely to have to run the whole thing again.