What the statute already says, since this is where boards actually operate

HRS § 514B-121(e), as amended by Act 42 (2024), already authorises electronic meetings, electronic voting and mail voting — at the board’s sole discretion, in five situations:

• during a chapter 127A state or local emergency;
• for a meeting noticed during such an emergency and held within sixty days;
• when a special meeting rule permitting it was adopted at an association meeting;
• when approved three to eighteen months in advance by written consent or majority vote at a meeting; or
• when the declaration or bylaws authorise it.

Two conditions attach: “For any electronic meetings, electronic voting, and mail voting, the voting deadline shall be within sixty days of the date the notice was first sent,” and the association “shall implement reasonable measures to verify that each person permitted to vote is a member of the association or proxy of a member.”

“Mail voting” includes ballots by mail, courier, or electronic transmission if a complete reproduction of the original.

Board meetings are separately covered by § 514B-125(d): telephonic and electronic board meetings are permitted unless the declaration or bylaws say otherwise, a director so participating “is deemed to be present in person,” and owners may participate electronically if permitted by the board, which may charge the owner the associated costs.

So what was actually missing

The five-situation list is a permission structure with gaps, and the gaps are where boards get advice they do not like. The clearest one: an association whose documents are silent and which has not adopted a rule or obtained advance approval can run electronic voting only in an emergency posture. Outside that, it needs to have planned three to eighteen months ahead — which is precisely the kind of foresight a self-managed association does not reliably have.

The proxy amendment, and why it was contentious

Limiting proxies to voting conducted at a meeting sounds technical. It is not, in Hawaii.

Hawaii’s proxy rules are unusually prescriptive. Under § 514B-123(d) a proxy is valid only if delivered to the secretary or managing agent no later than 4:30 p.m. Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time on the second business day before the meeting. Subsection (e) mandates a four-box standard form — quorum only; a named individual; the board as a whole voting by majority preference of directors present; or those directors present sharing the vote equally — and, critically: “if the proxy is returned with no box or more than one of the boxes… checked, the proxy shall be counted for quorum purposes only.”

Confining that machinery to meetings, in a system that also allows voting without a meeting, changes who controls the outcome when turnout is low. That is a real allocation of power, and it explains a 22–3 floor vote on a bill about videoconferencing.

What a board can do now

• Check which of the five § 514B-121(e) routes you actually have. If the answer is “we did it during the emergency,” that authority has lapsed.
• Adopt the authority in advance. The three-to-eighteen-month approval route, or a bylaw amendment, is what converts electronic voting from an emergency measure into a normal one.
• Diary the sixty-day voting deadline from the date notice is first sent.
• Document your member-verification method. The statute requires “reasonable measures” and does not define them; a written description adopted in advance is what a challenged election will be judged against.
• Do not let proxy practice drift. The 4:30 p.m. second-business-day deadline and the four-box rule are unchanged, and the quorum-only default for a defective form is where most Hawaii proxy disputes end up.

What to watch

Reintroduction in 2027. HB 850 and HB 1679 are the same idea two sessions running, and a bill that gets to conference twice usually gets a third attempt.