Terms of use

This is not legal advice

We are an independent inspector of elections. We are not attorneys and we do not practise law. Nearly every page here quotes or summarises the California Civil Code, and that is information about what the statute says rather than advice about your association. Reading it creates no attorney-client relationship and no professional relationship of any kind. For advice about your situation, talk to your association's counsel.

Law changes, and this site can fall behind

California HOA election law is amended most years. AB 2159 took effect on 1 January 2025 and rewrote the rules for electronic balloting. AB 1892 changes the acclamation notice period on 1 January 2027. Pages carrying statutory detail show the date we last reviewed them, and that date is the honest limit of what we are telling you. Where our plain-English summary and the statute disagree, the statute is right, and we would like to hear about it so we can fix the page.

Every citation on this site links to leginfo.legislature.ca.gov, the Legislature's own text. Follow the link rather than trusting our paraphrase on anything that matters.

Your governing documents may say more

The deadlines and thresholds described here are statutory minimums. Associations routinely have CC&Rs or bylaws imposing longer notice periods, higher approval thresholds or a different quorum, and where they do, those govern your election. Nothing on this site overrides your own governing documents, and anyone who tells you otherwise without reading them has not read them.

Estimates are not quotes

Any calculator or estimate on this site is a working figure produced from published rates and the numbers you typed. It is not an offer and it binds neither of us. The binding number is the written fixed-price proposal we send you, and it becomes firm when you confirm your separate-interest count and your voting method.

The timeline tool works the same way. It applies statutory minimums to a date you supply, and it cannot see your governing documents, your election rules, or whether your membership roll is in a fit state.

Using the site

Read it, print it, and send it to your board. Quote it with attribution. What you may not do is submit false information through the proposal form, interfere with the site or the people using it, or scrape it at a volume that degrades it for anyone else. The words and the layout are ours. The statutes we quote belong to everybody.

Where we limit our responsibility

This site is provided as it stands. We take real care with the statutory material and we correct errors when we learn of them, and we still cannot promise it is complete, current or right for your association. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for a decision made on the basis of this website alone. If you engage us, our responsibilities to you are the ones written into the engagement letter, and that document governs the relationship rather than this page.

The rest

These terms are governed by the law of the State of California. If we change them, the review date below changes with them. Questions go through our contact page, and how we handle what you send us is set out in our privacy policy.

Last reviewed September 24, 2026. These terms apply to hoaballotservices.org.