Owner walks out of AGM before election – is she still on committee?

snazzy granny wrote:

My question is – do you have to be voted on to a committee or is merely nominating yourself sufficient.

Nominating yourself is enough unless there are fewer seats than there are nominations, in which case you hold a ballot.

She could have nominated before the meeting, so she doesn’t have to be there for the vote, provided she did so in writing.

The only other complication might be if she is a joint owner of her flat, in which case she can’t self-nominate.

The correct procedure is:

1. for the chair to announce the pre-meeting nominations (which must be in writing)

2. Call for nominations from the floor

3. take a vote on how many seats the owners want on the committee (between 1 and 9)

4. Organise a vote if there are more nominations than seats.

By the way, voting must be done by giving everyone a blank sheet of paper on which they should write the names of their preferred nominated candidates, up to a possible maximum of the number of seats available (but they don’t have to fill in the same number of names as there are seats).

If you followed the above procedure to the letter of the Regulations (Part 2, sections 9 and 10) you could argue that she wasn’t there when oral nominations were called for as part of the precribed procedure.

But if you strayed from the correct processes, you could find the whole election process challenged and you might have to hold another general meeting and start again.