Email Ballots vs Secure Electronic Voting Platforms Under Florida Law

Since Florida amended its condominium voting law in 2025, boards keep asking a reasonable question. If owners can now just email a ballot, why pay for an online voting platform for HOA elections or condo elections at all? The answer comes down to what the two methods actually do to your election, and to one word that appears throughout Florida law: secrecy. Understanding the difference protects your association from challenges and protects your owners’ privacy.

Where Email Ballots Come From

Effective July 1, 2025, House Bill 913 amended Section 718.128 of the Florida Statutes to add an email ballot option for condominiums. Even a condominium association that has not adopted a formal online voting system must now designate an email address to receive ballots and count the ones that comply. It sounds convenient, and for some quick votes it can be. But the law attaches conditions that change the picture.

It is also important to know that this email ballot provision applies to condominiums, not to homeowners associations. The HOA statute, Section 720.317, does not contain the same fallback, so an HOA that wants to vote electronically generally must use a compliant online voting system rather than relying on email. For HOAs, the choice is not email versus platform. It is platform or paper.

The Problem With Email Ballots: No Secrecy

Here is the catch that surprises boards. To email a ballot under Section 718.128, the owner has to type their unit number and their name, which serves as their signature, and the ballot must display a statutory notice in capital letters stating that emailing it waives the secrecy of the vote. In plain terms, an emailed ballot arrives tied to the owner who cast it. Anyone processing those emails can see how each person voted.

For a routine yes or no question that may not matter much. For a contested board election, it matters a great deal. Owners may not want the sitting board to see that they voted for a challenger, and the loss of secrecy can suppress honest participation. Florida law recognizes this, which is why the statute forces that bold warning onto the ballot in the first place.

There are practical burdens too. Emailed ballots must be collected, opened, verified against the membership, and reviewed folder by folder, with a sworn affidavit needed to establish that the association reviewed everything. It is manual, slow, and easy to get wrong, and every mistake is a potential ground for challenge.

How a Secure Platform Is Different

A compliant online voting platform is built to satisfy the full list of safeguards in Sections 718.128 and 720.317, and secrecy is at the center of that list. The statute requires an election system to permanently separate the voter’s identifying information from the ballot, so that it is impossible to tie a ballot to a specific owner. A secure online voting platform does exactly that. Owners vote from anywhere, and the system confirms who voted without ever revealing how they voted.

Beyond secrecy, a proper platform authenticates each voter’s identity, confirms that a vote was not altered in transit, sends every voter a receipt, tabulates instantly, and stores results for any recount or inspection. Votes cast through the platform count toward quorum, and the whole process produces a clean, defensible record instead of an inbox full of ballots. You can see how the security model works on our platform security page.

Side by Side

Emailed ballots waive secrecy, require manual handling, apply only to condominiums, and put the burden of proof on the board. A secure platform preserves secrecy, automates authentication and tabulation, works for both condominiums and homeowners associations, and produces an auditable record. For a low stakes question, email may be enough. For an election, the platform is the safer choice by a wide margin.

Choose the Method That Protects Your Election

The email ballot rule is a useful backstop, but it was never meant to replace a real voting system, and it does nothing for HOAs. If your association runs contested elections, cares about owner privacy, or simply wants a process that will hold up if someone challenges the result, a secure platform is the right tool.

Voting Portals provides that platform for Florida condominium and HOA elections, designed around the secrecy and authentication requirements of Florida law. To compare it against your current process, book a demo or contact our team.