Condo AGM % Attendee Vote Needed Committee Member

[OneZero]

At a condo AGM what % vote of Attendees (Faces & proxies, not condo floorspace) is required to be elected to committee?

I have a feeling there are different answers at different condos & am wondering if there is some more official guidance in the condo act.

[Delight]

25% of the total building vote is required for a general meeting to be legal. This 25% can be a combination of co -owner attendees and proxies.

The selection of a committee is achieved via simple majority voting..

Typically the voting slip has all the candidates listed and each co -owner /proxy can select just one.

No doubt you are aware that it is minimum 3 maximum 9 members of a committee.

If for any reason a new committee is not selected-then the existing committee remains.

A condo must always have a committee-even if the committee only exists in theory.

[OneZero]

Delight, Thanks for your reply.  

Ref the word ""majority":  "Via simple majority" did you mean 50% of attendees/proxies?  

50% is the criteria one of my condos uses.  Another condo had used a different % (I forgot if 25%, 33%, or something else).

Yet another condo didn't require any %.  Whoever wanted to be on committee was ok, as long as they were among the top 9 vote getters and unless someone had valid objection / or requested further discussion.

 

Leads me wonder if a % is officially listed somewhere.

Can attendees at an AGM decide by themselves (by show of hands for example) what % they want to use during that particular AGM?

Edited March 20, 2020 by OneZero

[lkn]

On 3/20/2020 at 3:32 PM, OneZero said:

Yet another condo didn't require any %.  Whoever wanted to be on committee was ok, as long as they were among the top 9 vote getters and unless someone had valid objection / or requested further discussion.

That would be my interpretation of the rules. If 9 or less people want to be in the committee, they will all be in the committee, granted none of them have already served two consecutive terms.

 

To ban someone from serving on the committee, with only 9 or less candidates, the AGM will have to do a vote of no confidence about this person (which would permanently ban them from serving on the committee).

 

On 3/20/2020 at 3:32 PM, OneZero said:

Leads me wonder if a % is officially listed somewhere.

No percentage is listed, in fact, committee members are just appointed at the AGM. Only if you have more than 9 candidates, none of which have served two consecutive terms, would you even need to hold a vote, and in that case, it would just be the 9 candidates with the most votes, that would become committee members.

[lkn]

On 3/20/2020 at 1:53 PM, Delight said:

Typically the voting slip has all the candidates listed and each co -owner /proxy can select just one.

That doesn’t sound right, since you need (at most) 9 people, so each co-owner should be able to vote for 9 people, otherwise you may actually end up with less than 9 in the committee, even when there are more than 9 candidates.

[Delight]

16 hours ago, lkn said:

That doesn’t sound right, since you need (at most) 9 people, so each co-owner should be able to vote for 9 people, otherwise you may actually end up with less than 9 in the committee, even when there are more than 9 candidates.

 You are correct. i live in a very small condo.  The prospect of any number above 5 applicants is zero.

If there are 10 plus applicants for max 9 positions then a system using ordinal number will be required.

[Delight]

On 3/20/2020 at 3:32 PM, OneZero said:

Delight, Thanks for your reply.  

Ref the word ""majority":  "Via simple majority" did you mean 50% of attendees/proxies?  

50% is the criteria one of my condos uses.  Another condo had used a different % (I forgot if 25%, 33%, or something else).

Yet another condo didn't require any %.  Whoever wanted to be on committee was ok, as long as they were among the top 9 vote getters and unless someone had valid objection / or requested further discussion.

 

Leads me wonder if a % is officially listed somewhere.

Can attendees at an AGM decide by themselves (by show of hands for example) what % they want to use during that particular AGM?

 A simple majority -  My reply to lkn clarifies my mistake.

Special voting rules can only be achieved by some modification to the Rules and Regs.

This requires a 50 % vote to make the change.

This means that at least 50 % of votes at a  general meeting have to agree.

I would consider that impossible.

[OneZero]

Following is what I've found ref condo act.

 

Condo Act: For Committee selection see sections 37, 42 & 44.

https://www.samuiforsale.com/law-texts/new-thailand-condominium-act-2008.html

 

Section 44:

Section 44 The resolution of the general meeting shall be by the majority of votes of joint-owners attending the meeting unless this Act will have provided otherwise.

 

Note in section 44 above that "majority" is Not explicitely defined with a % (though admittedly perhaps some would say it implies 50%); and in the other sections that specificly address election of a committee an explicit % is clearly Not stated.  If a % were to be explicitly required it would be those sections that should state it.

 

Does the Condo Act purposely tend to be vague in order to allow condos flexibility to avoid difficulty filling committee positions that indeed tend to be thankless & in fact frequently headache positions?

 

Delight,   

(& any others with experience or desire to comment),

Do you agree then with Lkn's comments at post#4?

 

 

 

 

[lkn]

1 hour ago, OneZero said:

Note in section 44 above that "majority" is Not explicitely defined with a % (though admittedly perhaps some would say it implies 50%)

Majority is most certainly no less than 50% (of the attending votes).

 

But this is about passing a resolution. I would argue that appointing committee members is not the same as passing a resolution.

 

Another way to look at it is to understand the intent of the Thai Condo Act (commonly done when interpreting ambiguous laws).

 

There is a clause saying committee members cannot serve more than two consecutive terms, nor can committee members hold any proxies at the AGM: This is to avoid a small group of people to “take over the building” (and remain in power), so the intent is to have turnover in the committee.

 

If we require having majority of the attending votes to join the committee, we can easily imagine a situation where e.g. developer still has a lot of votes, and they will then, together with two other co-owners, refuse to vote on any other co-owner than themselves, thereby denying anyone else to join the committee (by them not receiving majority of attending votes). So developer and their co-conspirators will remain in the committee by virtue of no new co-owners achieving majority of attending votes, allowing old committee members to serve beyond two consecutive terms.

 

 

This very clearly goes against the intent of the Thai Condo Act, therefore I would use that as an argument as to why majority vote is *not* required to appoint committee members (i.e. it is not explicitly stated, and it would go against what other clauses are there to achieve).