Online Voting for HOA Elections: Cost per Election and What Your State Requires

Last verified: October 8, 2026 · See updates

One online election for a 60-unit association costs $9.99, $29 or $99 depending on which platform you use, and $250 if your board adds it to the software it already pays for. Three other voting vendors publish no price at all. The harder question comes first: your state’s statute decides whether you may send an electronic ballot, and in 7 of the 10 states we read it attaches a condition the board cannot satisfy on its own. This page gives both answers, with the vendor page and the state code section each one came from.

Three things we found

1. A Texas HOA does not have to buy anything. Tex. Prop. Code sec. 209.00592(d) defines an “electronic ballot” as one given by “e-mail, facsimile, or posting on an Internet website”, so long as the owner’s identity can be confirmed and the owner can get a receipt of the transmission. A platform makes the receipt and the identity check easier to evidence. It is not what the statute asks for. See the state table.
2. The permission usually belongs to each owner, not to the board. In 7 of the 10 states whose statutes we read, the law attaches an individual condition: Florida, California, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, Illinois and New Jersey each require owner consent, an opt-in or opt-out, or a paper alternative the association pays for. Illinois goes furthest in one direction, 765 ILCS 160/1-85(f) and 765 ILCS 605/18.8(f): a member who gives no written authorization must be dealt with on paper “at its expense”. North Carolina goes furthest in another: under G.S. 55A-7-08 an electronic-only vote needs every voting member to have complied with G.S. 55A-1-70(b).
3. Price spreads 25 times for the same election, and the free tiers stop at about 20 voters. For a 60-voter election the published prices we read run $9.99 to $250. Every free tier we found caps at 20 or 25 voters, which covers a small condominium and nothing larger. The cost table has all of it.

Three different things get called “online voting”

Boards and vendors use one phrase for three mechanisms, and the statutes treat them differently.

• An electronic ballot. The owner casts a vote through a website, by email or, in two states’ statutory text, by fax. This is what the rest of this page is about.
• An electronic proxy. The owner appoints someone else to vote, and signs that appointment electronically. Arizona’s absentee ballot sections say in terms that the ballot “may not authorize another person to cast the member’s vote”, so in Arizona the two cannot be combined in one document.
• An electronic meeting. Owners attend by video or telephone. Virginia handles this in a separate subsection of the same statute, and the board has to adopt guidelines before it may hold one.

A vendor quote for “online voting” may cover one of the three or all three. Ask which, in writing, before the board votes on the contract.

What one online election costs, read October 8, 2026

Every vendor below charges by the size of the voter list, not by turnout. Each figure was read at the vendor’s own pricing page on October 8, 2026. A blank means the vendor publishes no figure a board can see without asking for a quote.

Sources, each read October 8, 2026: vote.direct/pricing; electionbuddy.com/pricing; associationvoting.com/pricing; voteally.com/pricing; townsq.io/pricing; condovoter.com/pricing; votehoanow.com; simplyvoting.com/pricing; app.tapvoter.com/pricing.

What the managed options add, and when a state makes you buy one

Running the election yourself is the cheapest row in every case above. Two states we read require a person your board cannot supply.

• California requires an independent inspector of elections, one or three of them, under Civ. Code sec. 5110(a). Section 5110(b) says the inspector “may be a member, but may not be a director or a candidate for director or be related to a director or to a candidate for director”, and may not be anyone under contract to the association for other paid services. vote.direct publishes $300 per managed election to serve as inspector, on top of $199 for the managed election itself, a total it states as “From $499”. That is the only published inspector price we found; it is one vendor’s figure, not a market rate.
• Washington bars the people most likely to be counting. RCW 64.90.455(9)(c) keeps incumbent board members and candidates out of the count on secret ballots. In a 30-unit self-managed association the treasurer is frequently both a candidate and the person tallying, which that subsection forbids.
• Set-up help is priced separately nearly everywhere. ElectionBuddy publishes Setup Review at $299 and Expert Setup at $599, added to the per-election price. AssociationVoting publishes an Election Set-up Service at $250. vote.direct publishes Setup & Launch from $99 and a full managed election from $199, each for up to 100 voters.

If your board already pays for HOA software

Several all-in-one platforms carry a voting module, and whether it is in the price or beside it changes the arithmetic. Read October 8, 2026 at each vendor’s pricing page.

Sources, each read October 8, 2026: runhoa.com/pricing; kindhoa.com/pricing; vinteum.io/pricing; townsq.io/pricing; hoastart.com/pricing; payhoa.com/pricing; hoalife.com/pricing; condocontrol.com/pricing.

Worked example: a 60-unit condominium electing three directors

The same association our annual budget workbook is built around, scaled to 60 units, with one vote per unit and 62 eligible voters because two units are held by co-owners who each hold a vote. One annual election, three board seats, no ballot measure.

The spread between the cheapest and the dearest self-serve route here is $89.01 a year, which is less than one hour of most attorneys’ time. The decision that carries real money is the one below: whether your state lets you do it at all, and what it makes you send to the owners who do not vote online.

What 10 states require, read at the official code on October 8, 2026

Each row below was read at that state’s own legislature or code site on October 8, 2026. Condominium acts and planned-community acts are separate statutes in most states and they are not always identical, so both citations appear where both were read. This is a reading of the statute. It is not a reading of your declaration and bylaws, which can be stricter and which control alongside it.

Sources, each read October 8, 2026: Fla. Stat. 718.128 and 720.317; Cal. Civ. Code div. 4, pt. 5, ch. 6, art. 4; Tex. Prop. Code ch. 209; A.R.S. 33-1812 and 33-1250; 2023 Statutes of Nevada ch. 172; N.C. G.S. 55A-7-08; Va. Code 55.1-1832 and 55.1-1935; RCW 64.90.455; 765 ILCS 605/18.8 and 765 ILCS 160/1-85; N.J. P.L. 2017, c.106.

Nine questions to put to a voting vendor in writing

Every one of these comes from a requirement in the table above. A vendor that cannot answer in writing cannot be shown to your attorney, and in Florida and California the answers are what the statute asks the association to provide.

1. How do you authenticate that the person voting is the owner? Florida and California both require it, and Texas requires that the owner’s identity be confirmable.
2. Does each voter get a receipt? Florida, California and Texas each name a receipt or confirmation of transmission.
3. Is identifying information permanently separated from the ballot? Florida requires it for board elections, California for the electronic secret ballot. Ask whether separation happens at submission or at counting.
4. Can a board member or a candidate see the count in progress? Washington forbids it on secret ballots. Ask whether the platform can lock an administrator out of live results.
5. Can we run paper and electronic ballots side by side, on one deadline? North Carolina requires identical deadlines, Washington and California require a paper ballot for anyone who has not consented, Illinois and Virginia require a non-electronic route at the association’s expense.
6. Does the platform support weighted voting? Many declarations allocate votes by square footage or percentage interest. ElectionBuddy places weighted voting on its $29 tier; other vendors place it behind a quote.
7. How long do you keep the ballots, and who can retrieve them for a recount? California requires storage accessible to elections officials for recount and review, Washington requires retrieval and review, Arizona requires one year of owner inspection.
8. Does the price cover reminders, and how many? Turnout against a quorum requirement is the usual failure mode. ElectionBuddy publishes 1 reminder on Plus, 3 on Premium and 10 on Professional.
9. What happens if we miss quorum? Ask whether the deadline can be extended inside the platform. Washington lets the board extend by up to 11 months with further notice, and earlier votes still count unless revoked.

Working backward from the annual meeting

The dates below are the statutory ones from the table, not a vendor’s suggestion, and they stack. A California association holding its annual meeting on March 15 is already late if it has not adopted its election operating rule by the start of the year.

• Before anything else: read your declaration and bylaws. In Virginia the statute applies unless the declaration expressly prohibits electronic means, and in North Carolina unless the articles or bylaws limit it. The documents can also set a notice period longer than the statute’s.
• Board resolution or operating rule: Florida and California both require one before an electronic ballot may go out. Florida’s HOA section adds 14 days notice of the board meeting that adopts it, with an affidavit kept in the records.
• 90 days before the election: in California, the last day a member may change between electronic and written ballot.
• At least 30 days before: in California, individual notice of the electronic secret ballot with instructions for reaching the voting system, and separately 30 days notice before any opt-out deadline.
• At least 15 days: Nevada’s return window for board election ballots. At least 14 days: Washington’s return window, and Florida’s deadline for an owner to confirm their device reaches the system. At least 7 days: Arizona’s minimum return window for an emailed absentee ballot.
• Meeting notice itself runs on its own clock, which is a different statute again. Our meeting notice deadline calculator gives the last date notice may go out for your state and meeting type, with the citation.

What to do next

• Pull your voter list and count the people entitled to vote, not the units. That number decides your price band in the cost table.
• Find your state in the state table and read the citation at the source link before you spend anything.
• If your board already pays for a platform, check the all-in-one table: you may own the feature already, or you may be looking at $250 a vote.
• Set the election date, then work the deadlines backward with the meeting notice deadline calculator and the annual operations calendar.
• Compare the rest of the platform, not the voting module alone: our HOA software directory and pricing page carry every vendor above that sells more than voting.