California · Davis-Stirling Act

When the members must vote, and how many votes are enough.

Most decisions in a common interest development belong to the board. Four do not. And of the three thresholds the Act uses to decide whether a measure passed, no two mean the same thing — which is why a measure can win the votes cast and still fail.

The four votes

§ 5100(a)(1) names them, and it names them notwithstanding any other law or provision of the governing documents — so a declaration cannot take any of the four away from the members:

1. Assessments legally requiring a vote — see §§ 5600–5625.
2. Election and removal of directors — see § 5105.
3. Amendments to the governing documents — see the declaration and the governing documents.
4. The grant of exclusive use of common area under § 4600 — reproduced below, and the one most often missed.

All four must be held by secret ballot under the election article, which means election operating rules, a double envelope, and an inspector of elections who is neither a director nor a candidate nor already under contract with the association for other paid services. The list is a floor, not a ceiling: § 5100(b) lets the operating rules put any other topic under the same article, and once they do, the same machinery applies to it.

Two thresholds, and they are not interchangeable

When the Act says a measure needs a majority of all members it means one thing, and when it says a majority of a quorum it means another. Both phrases are defined, each in a single sentence, and the difference between them decides elections.

A majority of all members — § 4065

§ 4065 measures against the votes entitled to be cast. Turnout is irrelevant. In a development of 100 separate interests, a measure needs 51 affirmative votes whether 60 members vote or 100 do — and a ballot nobody returns counts the same as a no.

This is the threshold behind § 4270(b), which supplies the percentage when a declaration is silent about its own amendment.

A majority of a quorum — § 4070

§ 4070 is the lower bar, and it has two conditions rather than one. The measure needs an affirmative vote of a majority of the votes represented and voting in an election where a quorum is represented — and those affirmative votes must also constitute a majority of the required quorum.

The second condition is the one that catches people, because it is a floor that does not move when turnout does. Take a development of 100 separate interests with a 50% quorum:

§ 4070 is the threshold for raising a regular assessment past the 20% cap (§ 5605(a)), for reversing a rule change by member petition (§ 4365(d)), for deleting developer provisions after construction ends (§ 4230(d)), and for approving a consensual lien against regular assessments (§ 5620(b)).

One of those defines its own quorum rather than borrowing the association's: for § 4230 only, quorum means more than 50 percent of the members who own no more than two separate interests — which deliberately excludes a developer still holding a block of unsold units.

The 67 percent vote: granting exclusive use of common area

A board may want to let one member use a piece of the common area as their own — a patio, a storage closet, a strip of lawn behind a unit, a parking space. § 4600(a) says it may not simply do that. It needs the affirmative vote of members owning at least 67 percent of the separate interests, unless the governing documents specify a different percentage.

Note what that is measured against. Not the votes cast, not a quorum, not 67 percent of those who bothered — 67 percent of every separate interest in the development. It is a harder threshold than either § 4065 or § 4070, and in a community with ordinary turnout it is hard to reach at all.

§ 4600(c) adds a requirement that belongs to the ballot itself rather than the count: any measure asking the members to approve a grant must state whether the association will receive money for it, and whether the association or the transferee will carry the insurance. A ballot that omits either is defective on its face.

The grants that need no vote at all

§ 4600(b) then lists the exceptions, and the list is long enough that the more common mistake runs the other way — an association holding a 67 percent vote it never needed. No member vote is required to correct an engineering error or a construction encroachment, to meet a public agency's requirement, to accommodate a disability, to hand over common area that is inaccessible and of no general use, to comply with governing law, or to assign a parking space or storage unit that the declaration already designated for assignment but never assigned.

Three of the exceptions are newer and worth naming, because they are the ones a board is most likely to meet this year: running utility lines across the common area for an electric vehicle charging station under § 4745, granting a licence for one, and installing a solar energy system on the common area roof of a residence under §§ 714, 714.1 and 4746. None of them needs 67 percent of anything.