To enhance voter participation, security, and efficiency in our election processes, I
move that Surfside HOA adopt ElectionBuddy, an advanced and secure online voting
platform, for implementing electronic voting, mirroring the successful process used by
an HOA in Virginia. ElectionBuddy is a professional software company with thousands
of organizations running 260000 elections with 38 million voters.
A electionBuddy case study published highlights the significant improvements in voter
participation and election efficiency achieved by a Virginia HOA by adopting
ElectionBuddy. With approximately 3,500 members, this HOA experienced an increase
in voter turnout and successfully met quorum requirements using a hybrid voting
system of paper and electronic ballots. It took three days to setup electronic voting.
They made no changes to paper ballot voting; they just expanded ease of voting by
sending electronic ballots to all members by email, giving them the option to cast
ballots electronically or on paper. The HOA is home to FBI and DOJ employees who
had no issue with the security of electronic voting or providing personal emails. The
cost was 1200 dollars.

Benefits of Implementing ElectionBuddy:

. Increased Voter Participation: The convenience of electronic voting is
likely to increase voter turnout, as evidenced by nearly 100% positive
feedback in the Virginia HOA’s post-election survey.
. Enhanced Security: ElectionBuddy employs advanced security
measures to ensure the integrity and condentiality of votes, which is
trusted even by residents working in IT and federal agencies.
. Transparency: ElectionBuddy provides detailed audit trails and reports,
ensuring a transparent election process.
. Efficiency: The entire setup process for the election was completed in
less than two weeks.
. Independence: The HOA had no involvement except to release the
email list to ElectionBuddy. ElectionBuddy ran the election and just
provided the results, eliminating con icts of interest compared to
having a management company with a financial conflict of interest by
running an election while being paid for other services..

Hybrid Voting System: the motion is to Implement a hybrid voting system by distributing
paper and electronic ballots to members. This approach ensures compliance with
existing bylaws that require paper ballots while also providing the convenience of
electronic voting, particularly for remote voters. Many have reported issues with
receiving their ballots late or not at all. For example, I received three ballots: one with
“candidate” instead of names, one with my name misspelled, and one correct ballot.
Additionally, some members reported not receiving the budget vote ballots. These
issues disenfranchise remote voters and need to be addressed. Adopting
ElectionBuddy will modernize our election process, making it more efficient, secure,
and accessible for all members