The latest strange electoral rules changes from CBWRA – you have to buy one RA membership for each property you own, to get voting rights

The CBWRA chair elections form contains the following text

‘‘Voting remains strictly for members of CBWRA, duplicate vote submissions will be void, and members holding multiple memberships will be counted in line with the number of memberships held. e.g – A person owns two apartments and has paid the minimum of £20 per apartment (£40), their vote will be counted as voting twice. A leaseholder however with multiple properties but who only made a payment of £20, their vote will only count once”. 

Clear now? What I think they mean is that you need to buy a separate membership of the CBWRA for each property you own! Which is a pretty strange requirement, and expressed in an even stranger way. Membership of CBWRA has always been on an individual (personal basis) and that gives you a vote for each property you own. This would seem to be an attempt to further reduce participation in the election because there is no way people will buy additional RA memberships for additional properties, just to vote in a Chair election.

Further, the decision to restrict voting to CBWRA members is likely to have a very negative impact on voting turnout which was already very low (just 350 votes from approximately 1150 apartments, which is around 30%). CBWRA tried to justify this by saying it was required in the constitution – but they are the ones who changed the constitution so that it was required!.

The voting form, which is on the ”classy” google forms platform, also refers to ‘the current chair’s’ and the poster advertising the elections refers to ‘the residents association’. So we have apostrophes where none are required and none where they are required. It is a small thing but pretty unprofessional and a mistake they are still making after 3 years.

Given that voting is limited to CBWRA members, for whom CBWRA have a full databases presumably, then the email addresses could have been loaded into SurveyMonkey and personalised links produced, which would mean that only the recipient could use them and would avoid the need for form filling. It seems CBWRA cannot afford SurveyMonkey anymore which is consistent with what we know about the state of CBWRA finances. However, to be fair, it probably would not be value for money – as they do not consult residents so they would not get much use out of an annual license :).