Oregon HOA Board Elections

Section 1: Overview — How board elections are governed in Oregon

In Oregon, the rulebook for a board election depends on what kind of community you live in. Two separate, comprehensive statutes split the field. Condominiums answer to the Oregon Condominium Act, ORS Chapter 100.¹ Planned communities — the non-condominium HOAs that cover most single-family subdivisions — answer to the Oregon Planned Community Act, ORS Chapter 94.² Both statutes spell out association governance and the election of the board in operational detail, and both hand a defined set of mechanics to each community's declaration and bylaws.

The two chapters are separate bodies of law, and they do not borrow from each other. A provision of Chapter 100 does not reach a planned community, and a provision of Chapter 94 does not reach a condominium.³ So the first question on any Oregon board-election issue is which statute applies — and that turns entirely on whether the community is a condominium or a planned community. Each chapter stands on its own. Each fixes director eligibility, declarant-control limits, meeting and quorum rules, permitted voting methods, and director removal, while leaving board size, terms, nomination procedure, and the vote threshold to elect to the governing documents.

Oregon has not adopted the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act. Chapters 100 and 94 are Oregon's own work, so UCIOA section numbers, deemed-ratification rules, and model declarant-control percentages do not control here. Oregon belongs to the comprehensive two-statute, non-UCIOA category: detailed governance rules, split by community type, backed by corporate law. The sections that follow lay out the framework first, then the operational mechanics, then recent legislative and judicial activity.

Section 2: The election framework

2A. The Oregon Condominium Act (Chapter 100) and condominium board elections

The Oregon Condominium Act puts a board of directors in charge of the association's affairs, operating under the bylaws adopted through ORS 100.410.⁴ The board's powers, duties, removal, and authority to fill vacancies live in ORS 100.417, and director eligibility lives in ORS 100.416.⁵ The Act guarantees an elected board and builds the framework around it, but it leaves the number of directors and the method of their election to the bylaws under ORS 100.415.⁶

Two provisions carry a condominium from declarant control to a board the unit owners elect. ORS 100.200 caps the declarant-control period: a declaration or bylaws may not reserve administrative control past the point where 75 percent of the units have been conveyed to people other than the declarant, and for a staged or flexible condominium, past the earlier of seven years from the first conveyance or that 75 percent mark. When the period ends, control passes to the unit owners automatically.⁷ ORS 100.210 then puts the declarant on a clock: it must call a turnover meeting within 90 days, on 10 to 50 days' notice, and at that meeting the unit owners — if a quorum shows up — elect enough directors to make a board quorum.⁸

Here is the division of labor. The Act fixes director eligibility (an individual who owns or co-owns a unit, with stated exceptions), the declarant-control ceiling, the turnover mechanism, the annual-meeting requirement, the quorum default, the permitted voting methods, and the director-removal standard. It leaves to the declaration and bylaws the board size, director terms, term limits, staggering, candidate nomination, and the vote threshold to elect. Chapter 100 stands apart from the Planned Community Act (Chapter 94), which governs non-condominium HOAs, and from UCIOA, which Oregon never enacted.

2B. The Oregon Planned Community Act (Chapter 94) and planned-community board elections

The Oregon Planned Community Act governs planned communities — the subdivisions where owning a lot makes you a member of the association automatically. Its core board provision is ORS 94.640, which lets the board act for the association except where the declaration and bylaws limit it, sets the director-removal standard, and handles vacancies.⁹ Director eligibility sits in ORS 94.639.¹⁰ The Act tells the bylaws, under ORS 94.635, to specify how the board is elected, how many directors serve, how long their terms run, and how a director is removed.¹¹

Declarant control runs through ORS 94.600, which lets the declaration reserve a control period and passes the rights to the lot owners automatically when it expires; a declarant may not expand reserved special declarant rights after the first lot sale without the consent of owners holding 75 percent of the non-declarant vote.¹² Turnover runs through ORS 94.609, which governs notice of the turnover meeting, and ORS 94.616, which governs the meeting itself, where the owners elect the board; ORS 94.642 supplies a receivership remedy if the association fails to fill board vacancies.¹³

The division of labor mirrors the condominium side. The Act fixes director eligibility, the declarant-control framework, turnover, the annual-meeting and notice requirement, the quorum default, the permitted voting methods, and director removal. It leaves board size, terms, term limits, staggering, nomination, and the election threshold to the governing documents. The key point holds: Chapter 94 governs planned communities, not condominiums. It is a separate statute from Chapter 100, and Oregon does not cross-apply the two.

2C. Corporate law, the bylaws, and order of precedence

Most Oregon associations incorporate as nonprofit corporations under the Oregon Nonprofit Corporation Act, ORS Chapter 65. That Act fills the gaps for directors — standards of conduct, conflict-of-interest rules, and default vacancy and quorum mechanics — wherever the community-association chapter and the bylaws say nothing. Both Chapter 100 and Chapter 94 expressly pull in the Chapter 65 director-conduct standards (ORS 65.357 and related sections), whether or not the association is incorporated.¹⁴ Chapter 65 is corporate scaffolding. It is not the source of Oregon's statutory governance rules for community associations.

For a board-election question, the order of precedence runs like this: first the applicable community-association statute (Chapter 100 for a condominium, Chapter 94 for a planned community), then the recorded declaration, then the bylaws, then the Nonprofit Corporation Act gap-fillers, then board-adopted rules. Both chapters resolve conflicts in their own favor against Chapter 65: ORS 94.770 makes the Planned Community Act control over conflicting Chapter 65 provisions,¹⁵ and ORS 100.100 handles the condominium-to-Chapter 65 relationship the same way.¹⁶

The practical takeaway: community type decides the controlling rule first. The same question — how many days' notice, what quorum, who may run, how a director is removed — can have a different statutory home depending on whether the property is a condominium under Chapter 100 or a planned community under Chapter 94, even when the two statutes land in the same place.

Section 3: Election mechanics

A. Eligibility and nominations

Under both statutes, a director must be an individual who owns or co-owns: ORS 100.416 sets this for condominiums and ORS 94.639 for planned communities.^5,10 Both carve out exceptions for declarant-appointed directors and for trustees, fiduciaries, and entity representatives, and neither imposes a good-standing or residency requirement — so any such qualification comes from the bylaws, not the statute. Neither statute addresses candidate nomination; the declaration and bylaws set that procedure.

B. Notice, annual meeting, and quorum

Both chapters require at least one association meeting every calendar year — the meeting where boards usually get elected: ORS 100.407 for condominiums, ORS 94.650 for planned communities.^17,18 Both set the meeting-notice window at not less than 10 nor more than 50 days before the meeting, a mandatory statutory range. The quorum default is 20 percent of the voting rights under ORS 100.408 (condominium) and ORS 94.655 (planned community), and both let the declaration or bylaws raise the quorum but not lower it.^21,22

C. Voting methods, proxies, and ballots

Both statutes let owners vote in person, by proxy, by absentee ballot at the board's discretion, by written ballot in lieu of a meeting, and by electronic ballot unless the governing documents forbid it: see ORS 100.427, 100.425, and 100.428 for condominiums and ORS 94.660, 94.647, and 94.661 for planned communities.^19,20 A proxy expires one year after its date unless it names a shorter term, and the board may not demand a particular proxy form. For planned communities, ORS 94.641 bars a director from giving a proxy for a board meeting.²³ These methods are statutory defaults, and the declaration and bylaws may narrow them only in specified ways.

D. Terms, vacancies, removal, and recall

Neither statute addresses director term length, term limits, or staggering; the bylaws set them, though ORS 94.635 requires planned-community bylaws to state the terms of office.¹¹ Removal is statutory, and the two chapters run largely in parallel: under ORS 100.417 (condominium) and ORS 94.640 (planned community), owners at a meeting with a quorum may remove a non-declarant director with or without cause by a majority of those present and entitled to vote, subject to mandatory safeguards — the director gets an opportunity to be heard, each removal is a separate vote, and the notice must list the removal.^5,9 On vacancies, both ORS 100.417 and ORS 94.640 let the board fill a mid-term vacancy for the unexpired term unless the bylaws say otherwise, but the owners fill a vacancy they created by removing a director. ORS 94.642 adds a receivership remedy when a planned-community association fails to fill board vacancies.¹³

Section 4: Recent legislative and judicial activity

A. Recent bills

No bill in the past 24 months amended the core board-election, director-removal, quorum, proxy, or meeting-voting provisions of Chapter 94 or Chapter 100. The most recent enactment that touches those chapters appears below, with the substantive modernization of the election and meeting provisions noted afterward for context.

For context, the last substantive rewrite of the board-governance and meeting provisions was Senate Bill 329 (2021 Oregon Laws chapter 40), which amended ORS 94.640 and 94.650, added the board-meeting and electronic-meeting provisions in ORS 94.644, and amended the condominium board-meeting and electronic-notice provisions in ORS 100.420 and 100.423.²⁵ That act predates the 24-month window, but it remains the governing source for electronic meetings and notice.

B. Recent appellate rulings

No published decision of the Oregon Court of Appeals or the Oregon Supreme Court in the past 36 months interprets the board-election, contested-election, declarant-control transition, director-removal, or proxy and voting provisions of Chapter 94 or Chapter 100 that we could locate. Oregon appellate law in this niche is thin, and most association election disputes settle or resolve in the Circuit Courts before a precedential opinion issues. An election dispute that is appealed runs from the Circuit Court to the Oregon Court of Appeals, with discretionary review by the Oregon Supreme Court.²⁶ A definitive negative would take a paid-database citator check keyed to the governance sections, which open sources do not fully replicate; editors should treat the absence of a recent on-point decision as a finding, not a guarantee.

C. Active legislative debates

No bill now pending before the Oregon Legislative Assembly proposes to amend the board-election or governance provisions of Chapter 94 or Chapter 100. In recent sessions, community-association legislative attention has centered on construction-defect reform, reserve and disclosure obligations, and the removal of discriminatory governing-document language — not on election mechanics.

Section 5: National positioning and related coverage

Oregon is a comprehensive two-statute, non-UCIOA state. The Oregon Condominium Act (Chapter 100) and the Oregon Planned Community Act (Chapter 94) govern board elections separately and in operational detail. That sets Oregon apart from UCIOA states, which run condominiums, planned communities, and cooperatives through a single uniform act, and from CC&R-primary states, which leave most election mechanics to recorded covenants over a thin statutory overlay. Oregon's signature feature here is the parallel-statute structure: two stand-alone comprehensive statutes, each addressing board elections, with no single common-interest code sitting on top. For a multi-state operator, that means one mandatory first step on every Oregon community — determine whether the property is a condominium under Chapter 100 or a planned community under Chapter 94, then apply the right statute, because the chapters are not interchangeable.

Federal frameworks also reach Oregon associations regardless of the state rules — the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, and the FCC's OTARD rule all apply.

1. Oregon Revised Statutes Chapter 100 (Condominiums), Oregon State Legislature ↩
2. Oregon Revised Statutes Chapter 94 (Real Property Development; Oregon Planned Community Act, ORS 94.550 to 94.783), Oregon State Legislature ↩
3. ORS 94.550(8) (defining "condominium" as property submitted to ORS Chapter 100) and 94.560 (legislative findings noting the Oregon Condominium Law does not apply to these homeowners associations), Oregon State Legislature ↩
4. ORS 100.405(3) (affairs of the association governed by a board of directors as provided in the bylaws adopted under ORS 100.410), Oregon State Legislature ↩
5. ORS 100.416 (criteria for board of directors membership) and ORS 100.417 (board of directors of association; powers, duties, removal, vacancies), Oregon State Legislature ↩
6. ORS 100.415(1)(e) (bylaws provide for the election of a board of directors and the number of persons constituting the board), Oregon State Legislature ↩
7. ORS 100.200 (declarant control of association; ceiling of 75 percent of units conveyed, or for staged/flexible condominiums the earlier of seven years from first conveyance or 75 percent; automatic passage to unit owners on expiration), Oregon State Legislature ↩
8. ORS 100.210 (turnover meeting; called within 90 days, notice at least 10 but not more than 50 days before, unit owners elect directors if a quorum is present), Oregon State Legislature ↩
9. ORS 94.640 (association board of directors; powers and duties; removal of director; vacancies), Oregon State Legislature ↩
10. ORS 94.639 (criteria for board of directors membership), Oregon State Legislature ↩
11. ORS 94.635 (association bylaws; election of the board, number of directors, terms of office, and method of removal), Oregon State Legislature ↩
12. ORS 94.600 (declarant control of association; automatic passage of rights to lot owners on expiration; 75 percent non-declarant consent to expand special declarant rights), Oregon State Legislature ↩
13. ORS 94.609 (notice of turnover meeting), ORS 94.616 (turnover meeting; transfer of administration; owners elect the board), and ORS 94.642 (receivership for failure to fill board vacancies), Oregon State Legislature ↩
14. ORS 94.640(1) and ORS 100.417(1) (officers and directors governed by ORS 65.357, 65.361, 65.367, 65.369 and 65.377 whether or not the association is incorporated under ORS Chapter 65), Oregon State Legislature ↩
15. ORS 94.770 (where ORS 94.550 to 94.783 conflict with ORS Chapter 65, the Planned Community Act controls), Oregon State Legislature ↩
16. ORS 100.100 (property submitted to unit ownership; conflict between ORS Chapter 100 and ORS Chapter 65), Oregon State Legislature ↩
17. ORS 100.407 (annual and special meetings of association; notice not less than 10 nor more than 50 days before the meeting), Oregon State Legislature ↩
18. ORS 94.650 (meetings of lot owners; notice; not less than 10 or more than 50 days before any meeting), Oregon State Legislature ↩
19. ORS 100.427 (methods of voting; in person, proxy, absentee ballot, written ballot in lieu of a meeting; proxy terminates one year after its date), ORS 100.425 (written ballot), and ORS 100.428 (electronic ballot), Oregon State Legislature ↩
20. ORS 94.660 (method of voting or consenting; in person, absentee ballot, proxy, written ballot; proxy terminates one year after its date; board may not require a prescribed proxy form), ORS 94.647 (written ballot in lieu of a meeting), and ORS 94.661 (electronic ballot), Oregon State Legislature ↩
21. ORS 100.408 (quorum for meeting of association; 20 percent of the voting rights unless the bylaws specify a greater percentage), Oregon State Legislature ↩
22. ORS 94.655 (quorum for association meetings; 20 percent of the votes unless the declaration or bylaws specify a greater percentage), Oregon State Legislature ↩
23. ORS 94.641 (assent of director to board action; director presumed to assent unless voting against or abstaining, with no proxy mechanism for board votes), Oregon State Legislature ↩
24. House Bill 3746 (2025 Regular Session), measure overview and enrolled text (enacted as 2025 Oregon Laws chapter 578; effective January 1, 2026; shortens construction-defect repose to 7 years, adds ORS 94.662 pre-suit owner notice, and directs semiannual condominium moisture-intrusion inspections), Oregon Legislative Information System ↩
25. Senate Bill 329 (2021 Regular Session), enacted as 2021 Oregon Laws chapter 40 (added ORS 94.644 board-meeting and electronic-meeting provisions; amended ORS 94.640, 94.650, 100.420 and 100.423), Oregon Legislative Information System ↩
26. Oregon Judicial Department, Appellate Court Opinions (Oregon Court of Appeals and Oregon Supreme Court) ↩