ELECTRONIC VOTING? ARE THE LEGISLATORS NUTS?

By Jan Bergemann

Published July 3, 2015

    

George Moraitis filed H 791, a community association bill full of nasty surprises. Common sense? Not much common sense contained in this bill!

 

I‘m still trying to figure out what motive caused State Representative Heather Fitzenhagen to come up with such nonsense. Who gave her the campaign funds that caused her to file such a bill (H 1211)?

 
It definitely was not an owners’ advocacy group that asked her to file a bill that will cause nothing but havoc in community associations. It opens the door to even more voting fraud and election chaos. As if we don’t already hear enough complaints about voting scams in Florida’s community associations.

  

If you read the new law (effective July 1, 2015) [Example FS 720.317 – the wording is the same for Condos (FS 718) and Co-ops (FS 719)] you will quickly find out that there are lots of requirements for the association to fulfill in order to allow electronic voting. That makes me think that maybe a computer-programmer is behind this bill trying to sell a computer program that may come close to the requirements listed in the new law? It will be very expensive to purchase such program – and to my knowledge no such program really exists. Tests failed – too many ways to cheat. And the bill doesn’t say what happens if more votes are counted than voters are in the community?

   

Or maybe it was her husband, community association attorney Richard DeBoest, who was looking for more billing hours? Make no mistake: This new law will definitely create more lawsuits, if associations really intend to use this electronic voting procedure as described?

  

There is a reason why nowhere in the USA electronic voting is allowed in official elections. It just doesn’t work! Maybe our esteemed legislators are trying to use community associations as guinea pigs, so the owners have to pay for the legal fees trying to sort out the legal mess electronic voting will create?

 

Anyway, let’s see when we get the first irate complaints from owners or board members who found out that this electronic voting provision is just a joke that will never work properly?

  

We have so many unsolved problems in community associations. Why are these legislators so gung-ho to create even more problems with useless laws?


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Jan Bergemann Jan Bergemann is president of Cyber Citizens For Justice, Florida 's largest state-wide property owners' advocacy group. CCFJ works on legislation to help owners living in community  

associations. He moved to Florida in 1995 - hoping to retire. He moved into a HOA, where the developer cheated the homeowners and used the association dues for his own purposes. End of retirement!

 

CCFJ was born in the year 2000, when some owners met in Tallahassee - finding out that power is only in numbers. Bergemann was a member of Governor Jeb Bush's HOA Task force in 2003/2004.

 

The organization has two websites to inform interested Florida homeowners and condo owners:

News Website: http://www.ccfj.net/.

Educational Website: http://www.ccfjfoundation.net/.

   
We think that only owners can really represent owners, since all service providers surely have a different interest! We are trying to create owner-friendly laws, but the best laws are useless without enforcement. And enforcement is totally lacking in Florida !


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