Assembly Bill 2159 · 2023–24 session
Electronic secret ballots, permitted from 1 January 2025
California HOAs may now hold board elections by internet-based secret ballot. AB 2159 amended six sections of the Civil Code to allow it, kept the independent inspector of elections in place, and left one category of vote on paper: regular and special assessments.
What changed
Before AB 2159, a California HOA holding a secret-ballot election ran it on paper, typically through a double-envelope system that separated the voter's identity from the ballot. Electronic voting sat in an uncertain position. The amendment replaced that uncertainty with a permission and a specification: an association may use an internet-based electronic secret ballot provided its system satisfies the requirements now written into § 5110(c)(4)(B).
The double envelope has not been abolished. It remains the paper procedure, and paper remains in every election for the reasons set out below.
What it did not change
The inspector of elections is still mandatory
AB 2159 clarified the inspector's role in an electronic election. It did not remove the requirement. An association voting electronically still retains an independent third party who is not a director, not a candidate, and not under contract with the association for other services. See § 5110.
Assessments remain on paper
Votes on regular and special assessments are excluded from electronic balloting. This is the single most-missed restriction in the amendment, and it breaks the sequence that platforms selling "decision then payment" assume: in California, the decision to levy is taken on paper even where everything around it is electronic.
Members may still choose paper
Electronic voting operates on an opt-out basis. The association adopts an election operating rule permitting it; the member may switch between electronic and paper no later than 90 days before the election; and a member with no email address receives a paper ballot automatically. Every California election is therefore hybrid in practice, and the two channels have to reconcile into one record.
It is a rule change before it is a software change
An association cannot switch to electronic voting for an election already close at hand. The operating rule has to be adopted, members notified of the method and of their right to opt out, and device compatibility confirmed — each on its own statutory clock, the earliest of which runs roughly five months ahead of the meeting.
Related
- § 5110 — inspector of elections, and the technical requirements for electronic balloting.
- § 5115 — quorum, and the adjourned meeting where it drops to 20 percent.
- § 5105 — election rules, and the 90-day right to switch voting method.
- § 5260 — the written-request rule, which now covers the electronic voting opt-out.
- Hybrid elections — what happens when both channels live in one election.
- AB 1458 — the separate 2023 amendment governing quorum at reconvened meetings.