If you thought HOA elections were supposed to be straightforward, you’re in for a story that’ll make you think twice. Our recent HOA board election at 175 East Delaware Place has been rocked by some eyebrow-raising discoveries, and we’re only just starting to scratch the surface. A detailed review of election materials has revealed multiple concerning irregularities in our HOA’s recent board election. It’s clear that something’s amiss and the findings raise serious questions about the integrity of the voting process and the accuracy of the final results.

Our HOA board election allows each owner to vote for up to 25 candidates. An owner’s voting power (their percentage of ownership) is divided equally among their chosen candidates. The candidates in this election fell into two main groups:

• Those endorsed by the current HOA President, Scott Timmerman.
• Change-oriented candidates seeking reform.

The following issues were discovered after examining just 25% of the ballots and reviewing the complete vote tabulation spreadsheet provided by Picker & Associates LLC, raising concerns about what additional discrepancies may be revealed as our investigation continues.

Misrecorded Votes

Correction: In the original analysis of the election data, I incorrectly identified Ballot 48 as Ballot 51. This mistake, while inadvertent, does not diminish the validity of broader concerns about election integrity. In fact, this clarification brought to light a new issue discovered by Timmerman: Picker & Associates assigned an incorrect ownership percentage to Ballot 48, resulting in an inflated vote value.

This raises further questions about the accuracy and consistency of Picker & Associates’ overall accuracy and introduces a new need to focus on identifying any other discrepancies recording ownership percentage documentation across all ballots.

Read The Original Content

A significant error was found in the recording of Ballot #48 (owner interest: 0.17816%):

• Three votes for candidates were completely omitted (Matheney, Singer, and Bolten).
• One vote was incorrectly recorded for a candidate the owner did not vote for (Carr).
• This error directly affected the voting percentages for multiple candidates.

1) Omitted Votes

2) Misattributed Vote

Phantom “Sample Ballot” Counted

Easily, this is one of the most startling discoveries so far:

• A sample ballot distributed by Board President Scott Timmerman was counted as a real vote (context: read about Timmerman’s decision to engage in recommending candidates while serving as Board President).
• This phantom ballot assigned 0.11408% ownership, distributed evenly, to each of Timmerman’s 25 recommended candidates.
• The irregularity was confirmed by finding seven entries with this exact percentage in the spreadsheet, but only six corresponding physical ballots with the amount listed.
• Scott Timmerman’s “Sample Ballot” was recorded as Ballot #11.

Update 11/24/2024: After hearing from Timmerman that he believes Ballot 11 was legitimate and submitted by an owner, I wanted to provide even more evidence illustrating why that is incorrect. The following image includes a copy of every legitimate ballot with a 0.11408% ownership stake, as well as Timmerman’s Sample Ballot, which has been treated as a real ballot. The excerpted spreadsheet shows the seven instances of votes recorded from unites with 0.11408% but you can see there are only six legitimate ballots cast. Timmerman’s Sample Ballot is marked as Ballot #11 and was recorded by Picker & Associates accordingly in the Ballot Tabulation Sheet.

Problems with Recording Multiple-Unit Owner Votes

Several issues emerged with ballots from owners of multiple units:

• Some ballots were marked and recorded as “cumulative” for owners with multiple units.
• These ballots had hand-written percentages and Control Numbers.
• The original individual unit ballots were missing from the official ballot pack when all individual ballots are supposed to be retained.
• This breaks the chain of documentation needed for proper vote verification.
• Other ballots from owners with multiple units are recorded individually.

It’s important to note, these discrepancies represent findings identified thus far. Analysis is ongoing, with the potential for additional irregularities to emerge as we continue our thorough review of the election process.

Requests for Clarification Met With Nonanswers

Despite multiple owners raising concerns about these discrepancies, Board President Scott Timmerman has maintained a stance of silence. Requests for clarification about the vote count changes between the preliminary and final announcements have gone unanswered. Most notably, there has been no move to initiate an independent review of the election results, despite documented evidence that every discovered error uniquely benefited his slate of recommended candidates.

When pressed for answers, the Community Association Manager issued what amounts to a circular response:

Community Association Manager

“The votes have been counted and re-counted, and the official results have been confirmed and certified…The final certified election results have been confirmed, and those are the only results that count.”

This response notably:

• Offers no explanation for the documented discrepancies.
• Deflects all responsibility to Picker & Associates who is not responding to inquiries.
• Claims results are “certified” without explaining who certified them.
• Dismisses legitimate concerns by simply restating that the results are “final.”

read the full email