Winning (and Losing) Strata Proxy Wars

We've heard this strata gripe before.

It's not fair (substitute your preferred word) that I was outvoted at the meeting by (insert name) because they had so many proxies.  It shouldn't be allowed!

And a recent article in the SMH by Keith Jackson repeats it with stories of unhappy outcomes from the writer's experience of proxy use and suggesting the simplistic solution of limiting proxies.

But, what's the reality of voting and proxies in strata corporations?  Here's what I think -

• Provided owners pay what's due they are entitled to vote on decisions and can vote any way they want to.  In other words, owners are allowed to be self-interested, unreasonable and inconsistent.  Which means that you can always expect perverse decisions.
• Most owners are not that interested in strata matters, meetings and voting at meetings. As a result, most places allow meetings to occur with as few as 25% of the owners and in many places even less using an 'interim decision' mechanism.  So, even small voting blocks (as small as 10%) can often influence strata decisions.
• Strata owners are adults (by definition) and as such can make decisions about giving (or not giving) a proxy.  So it's fair to assume they realise what they have and are doing by giving a proxy to someone (or can be persuaded to make a better decision).
• It's easy to cancel a proxy.  So, if a proxy holder's action become a real a problem for strata owners they can fix it.
• Abuses of the proxy, meeting and voting systems can always be remedied by challenges to decisions in courts and tribunals that have always recognised and addressed unreasonable decisions, bias, misleading conduct and oppression of minorities.
• There's usually only one strata owners' meeting per year.  So, there's plenty of time to get prepared, change things or do something about problems.
• Limiting proxy numbers doesn't prevent block voting by owners and groups of owners. 
• And, just because you're outvoted at a strata meeting doesn't mean you're right (and the others are wrong).

My suggestion to fix the 'strata proxy problem' is to increase owner involvement in decision so that individual votes and proxies are less influential and decision better represent strata owners' intentions.  That involves doing the following things.

1. Providing strata owners with better information about meetings, issues and decisions.
2. Offering strata owners other voting options (apart from attending meetings and proxies) like voting papers, electronic voting, etc.
3. Using technology to allow remote meeting participation via voice, video or avatar links.
4. Create new decision making processes that are not real time meeting based, like polls, forums, extended duration voting periods.
5. Reporting decisions and voting (especially by proxy) faster and more completely to strata owners.
6. Providing better information about the effects and results of decision options (before and after meetings).

I don't want to live in a nanny state where adults' rights to make decisions are limited.  But rather in a place where there's more information, transparency and reporting of issues, decisions and outcomes so we learn to make better decisions.

Francesco ...