Juristic Entities Requirements - Does someone know the following issues?

[Longwood50]

With general meetings is it required by law that the meeting and written materials be in both Thai and English? 

With proxies issued to people by other owners, can the proxy be given to a person who then uses the proxy to vote for themselves? 

Do the votes for specific issues such as the formation of a Juristic Entity  or for candidates for committee positions on the Juristic Entity committee have to be in the form of a paper vote with signature or can they be done by show of hands

[Delight]

With general meetings is it required by law that the meeting and written materials be in both Thai and English? 

 

Not True. The law is that only the Thai language is the official language.

English or any other language are merely languages of convenience.

 

With proxies issued to people by other owners, can the proxy be given to a person who then uses the proxy to vote for themselves? 

 

 When a person receives a proxy -then that person is voting as per the wishes of the proxy giver.

The proxy carrier can the vote for himself is certain circumstances i.e. being elected as a committee member.

 

Do the votes for specific issues such as the formation of a Juristic Entity  or for candidates for committee positions on the Juristic Entity committee have to be in the form of a paper vote with signature or can they be done by show of hands.

 

The minutes from all general meetings have to go to the land office.

For that reason all voting outcomes have to be signed by those who are voting.

 

 

 

Edited December 18, 2021 by Delight

[Longwood50]

1 hour ago, Delight said:

For that reason all voting outcomes have to be signed by those who are voting.

Thank you for your knowledgeable reply.  You confirm what one other person has also said.  

[lkn]

On 12/18/2021 at 7:08 AM, Delight said:

For that reason all voting outcomes have to be signed by those who are voting.

What do you mean by that? We do all voting by raise of hand, outcome is put into meeting minutes, but only JPM and chairman (I think) signs that. Though we do have all people sign an attendee list, which I *think* we give to the Land Office. The Land Office has been a bit lax about this because of COVID-19, e.g. we had people attend the AGM remotely both this and last year, and we still included their votes in the count.

Edited December 20, 2021 by lkn

[Longwood50]

1 hour ago, lkn said:

What do you mean by that? We do all voting by raise of hand, outcome is put into meeting minutes, but only JPM and chairman (I think) signs that

How can it then be established which homeowners voted, and what or who they voted for.  If I wish to be deceptive, I can say there were 50 votes for a proposal, sign attesting to it, and the Land Office would have no way of establishing if 50 people really voted.  There would also be no paper trail to allow anyone who wished to contest the vote to establish that 50 people really didn't vote for a particular proposal.  

Your process assumes that those running the Juristic Entity are honest.  That has not been my experience.  At one meeting it was reported that 4 people attended the meeting in order to have a quorum but those 4 people not only didn't attend the meeting but they were physically out of the country.  

[lkn]

8 hours ago, Longwood50 said:

How can it then be established which homeowners voted, and what or who they voted for

We have a spreadsheet with ownership ratio, so people raise their hand if they vote in favor of the proposal / option A / etc., and we count raised hands and check the corresponding unit in the spreadsheet, everyone can follow along, and result is immediately visible and gets entered into the meeting minutes.

 

Sure, the minute keeper can put in another result, but all attendees would know that meeting minutes does not reflect what actually happened at the meeting, and could even document it, had they taken a photo of the spreadsheet from the meeting.

 

We actually did paper ballots at one of the first meetings I attended, and it was a mess. Each participant got blank ballots, had to write in what was voted on, and how they voted, and someone collected all the ballots, took forever to count them, and I am quite sure they screwed up the count, as the percentages didn’t match up correctly with attending votes.

 

Our system is far more transparent, faster, and less prone to fraud. Only downside is that it does not allow secret voting, but given that each vote is weighted by ownership ratio, an anonymous system is not really possible.

Edited December 20, 2021 by lkn

[smutcakes]

On 12/20/2021 at 9:22 PM, lkn said:

We have a spreadsheet with ownership ratio, so people raise their hand if they vote in favor of the proposal / option A / etc., and we count raised hands and check the corresponding unit in the spreadsheet, everyone can follow along, and result is immediately visible and gets entered into the meeting minutes.

 

Sure, the minute keeper can put in another result, but all attendees would know that meeting minutes does not reflect what actually happened at the meeting, and could even document it, had they taken a photo of the spreadsheet from the meeting.

 

We actually did paper ballots at one of the first meetings I attended, and it was a mess. Each participant got blank ballots, had to write in what was voted on, and how they voted, and someone collected all the ballots, took forever to count them, and I am quite sure they screwed up the count, as the percentages didn’t match up correctly with attending votes.

 

Our system is far more transparent, faster, and less prone to fraud. Only downside is that it does not allow secret voting, but given that each vote is weighted by ownership ratio, an anonymous system is not really possible.

If it works for you thats great, but that sounds like an extremely risky, inaccurate and time consuming way of recording votes in a general meeting. Unless your condo has about 10 units. How many units are there?

[Longwood50]

7 minutes ago, smutcakes said:

We have a spreadsheet with ownership ratio, so people raise their hand if they vote in favor of the proposal / option A / etc., and we count raised hands

Any method of voting is fine, if the votes are rigged.  At ours there were votes supposedly cast by people who did not even attend.  The only way of establishing that was to go to the land office and obtain a copy of what was reported as the people who attended and look at the vote total. 

Even then, you would have to have a videotape to establish just how many hands were being raised, and of course that assumes you know each of the other owners and that they truly were the owner and not some shill in the group who was there to raise their hand for a particular property even though the property owner never attended. 

Seems to me, paper ballots with signed signatures is the only way to truly establish who voted.  Even then, as mentioned our entity to establish a quorum making the meeting legal reported that more homeowners were in attendance including forging their signatures on the attendance sheet. 

[smutcakes]

2 minutes ago, Longwood50 said:

Any method of voting is fine, if the votes are rigged.  At ours there were votes supposedly cast by people who did not even attend.  The only way of establishing that was to go to the land office and obtain a copy of what was reported as the people who attended and look at the vote total. 

Even then, you would have to have a videotape to establish just how many hands were being raised, and of course that assumes you know each of the other owners and that they truly were the owner and not some shill in the group who was there to raise their hand for a particular property even though the property owner never attended. 

Seems to me, paper ballots with signed signatures is the only way to truly establish who voted.  Even then, as mentioned our entity to establish a quorum making the meeting legal reported that more homeowners were in attendance including forging their signatures on the attendance sheet. 

I agree, signed ballots individually for each unit with the voting share, name etc printed on them- then these can be collected after each agenda item. The ballots are only given out when people register at the meeting with the correct documentation for themselves and the proper proxy information if they are holding a proxy. When people register someone from the Building Management team should be in the excel ticking the boxes of people registered so the quorum can be counted as people come in.

 

With paper balloting its easy to go back and check the voting, recount etc if their are allegations of improper procedure or voter fraud ????

[lkn]

3 hours ago, Longwood50 said:

Even then, you would have to have a videotape to establish just how many hands were being raised, and of course that assumes you know each of the other owners and that they truly were the owner

No, the spreadsheet is on the big screen where attendance is also visible, and raised hands are counted and entered into the spreadsheet in front of everyone.

 

Surely, if the spreadsheet starts to update counter to what room number some person say they represent, people will notice. Likewise, if someone tells a non-attending room number, people will notice, or if someone claims the room number of someone else in attendance, the real owner should notice.

 

Yes, the counting is serial, so this can take a while with many raised hands. For this reason, we tend to gauge the room and ask people to raise their hand for the non-popular option, e.g. “anyone who does not approve the budget, raise your hand”.

 

And it’s not like you can count paper ballots any faster, as you will also need to enter these into a spreadsheet, to get the proper ownership ratio weighting.

 

Cheating would only be possible if there is a person in the audience claiming to represent a non-attending unit, but got this unit marked as attending in the spreadsheet, and nobody else attending know the real owner of this unit, and this could be detected simply by taking a photo of the spreadsheet and ask the room owner if they did attend / check the signed attendance list (although if they got this far, surely they would have added a fake signature to the attendance list).

 

For paper ballots, exactly the same can happen, but it should actually be much easier, because very little about paper ballots happen in open, and if somebody is running a sham election, good luck getting them to give you all the ballots to verify signatures against unit owners. 

[Longwood50]

10 hours ago, lkn said:

No, the spreadsheet is on the big screen where attendance is also visible, and raised hands are counted and entered into the spreadsheet in front of everyone.

Well it sounds like your operation is far more sophisticated than most. At our meetings the person says they can't prepare a budget until they know how much money is collected.  There is no computer record being broadcast live to the people.  As mentioned, I don't believe most people recognize all of their fellow owners and which units they represent.  Many are company owned units so who is the general partner in the company.  So you get a show of hands.  Even the count is done by merely saying 1,2,3, and until recently there were not even minutes prepared.  Even now, minutes are prepared but never distributed.  

[smutcakes]

10 hours ago, lkn said:

No, the spreadsheet is on the big screen where attendance is also visible, and raised hands are counted and entered into the spreadsheet in front of everyone.

 

Surely, if the spreadsheet starts to update counter to what room number some person say they represent, people will notice. Likewise, if someone tells a non-attending room number, people will notice, or if someone claims the room number of someone else in attendance, the real owner should notice.

 

Yes, the counting is serial, so this can take a while with many raised hands. For this reason, we tend to gauge the room and ask people to raise their hand for the non-popular option, e.g. “anyone who does not approve the budget, raise your hand”.

 

And it’s not like you can count paper ballots any faster, as you will also need to enter these into a spreadsheet, to get the proper ownership ratio weighting.

 

Cheating would only be possible if there is a person in the audience claiming to represent a non-attending unit, but got this unit marked as attending in the spreadsheet, and nobody else attending know the real owner of this unit, and this could be detected simply by taking a photo of the spreadsheet and ask the room owner if they did attend / check the signed attendance list (although if they got this far, surely they would have added a fake signature to the attendance list).

 

For paper ballots, exactly the same can happen, but it should actually be much easier, because very little about paper ballots happen in open, and if somebody is running a sham election, good luck getting them to give you all the ballots to verify signatures against unit owners. 

(Bold bit 1) In meetings i have seen or been involved in. The paper ballots are collected at the end of each agenda, and the management running the meeting have someone to start calculating the votes. At the end of the meeting the results of the voting are provided, subject to double checking on all owner information, signatures to check for invalidating votes. This would be done by the Building Management after the meeting.  Eg, Checking official title deed that X person is actually listed on the title deed. Once all votes and calculations have been rechecked, the minutes are prepared and submitted to the Committee for checking. If the Committee agree, the documents are signed by the chairman of the meeting and the JPM and submitted to to the LD within 30 days with supporting paper ballots.

 

(Bold bit 2) The ballots are held by the management team so everything can be rechecked. If they dont give their ballot then their vote will not be registered.

[lkn]

5 hours ago, Longwood50 said:

Well it sounds like your operation is far more sophisticated than most

I don’t doubt it ???? 

 

5 hours ago, Longwood50 said:

At our meetings the person says they can't prepare a budget until they know how much money is collected

That is just ridiculous. Budget is voted on at the AGM and must therefore be presented to co-owners no less than 7 days before the meeting, and “money coming in” should not be an unknown.

 

But again, I do not doubt it. We initially also ran the building like that: Cash basis accounting, so building manager would do invoices in MS Word and send to co-owners for management fee, water supply, etc., and keep no record of this. Then when people paid, it would be recorded as income, unless the building staff just pocketed the money, as was the case for minor things like water supply, and in one case, a co-owner never got a receipt for their management fee for an entire year plus sinking fund contribution, and I could not find any records of this having been paid, but the co-owner seemed believable, unlike the person who allegedly received all this money in cash.

 

I had many meetings with our JPM, he claimed that this was the system used by all buildings, and that over the years, he had gotten input from many expat accountants that had perfected the system, like having arbitrary rules like never having more than 10,000 baht in petty cash, as if that would then be an upper limit of how much staff can steal from us…

 

First couple AGM were also paper ballots with someone counting them while we moved on to next agenda item, but that was a little difficult, because raising the management fee was one agenda item, and before knowing if we had passed that, we couldn’t really vote on investments, since we didn’t know if we had the money for this. And as indicated in my previous comment, after one meeting I did some math and found that the voting outcome for one vote did not make sense, compared to the ownership ratios and attendance. It didn’t matter, as there was enough of a majority regardless, but if not, I sincerely doubt it would have been easy for me to challenge, as our chairman at the time was quite the bully, and the JPM was incompetent.

 

Anyway, we got rid of both the chairman and JPM, and I had our accountant redo all accounting using accrued double entry accounting, and found several co-owners had unpaid bills, but also that a few co-owners had actually overpaid, due to having paid for overlapping periods.

 

The system can of course deteriorate once I leave the building, but I hope I have installed a culture and procedures that lives beyond my time in the building. For example everything is now done electronically, no receipt books, as is commonly used in Thailand, we use an external accountant to check everything each month, and we include inventory tracking in our digital accounting system.

 

I don’t know how many co-owners understand that the live vote count at the AGM is not just a convenience, but also to make the process transparent, but one could hope, that if paper ballots are reinstated, co-owners will ask why they can no longer follow the voting.