Texas added the electronic ballot to the list of HOA voting methods
Texas added the electronic ballot to the list of HOA voting methods
2026-09-19 · Texas · Legislation
What happened. Senate Bill 2629, 89th Legislature, Regular Session, took effect 1 September 2025 and made a small amendment with wide reach: it added a third item to the menu of voting methods a Texas property owners' association must make available.1
What the amendment actually changed
Section 5 of the act amends Property Code Section 209.00592(a-1). The subsection now reads:
“Except as provided by this subsection, unless a dedicatory instrument provides otherwise, a property owners' association is not required to provide an owner with more than one voting method. An owner must be allowed to vote by one of the following voting methods: (1) absentee ballot; (2) proxy; or (3) electronic ballot.”
The enrolled text shows the edit precisely: “electronic ballot” was added as subdivision (3), and the “or” that had closed subdivision (1) was struck.2 The structure is unchanged. An association is still not required to offer more than one method; what changed is which methods satisfy the requirement.
The limit that is easy to overstate
This amendment is sometimes described as a mandate that Texas associations offer electronic voting. The statutory text does not say that. It says an owner “must be allowed to vote by one of the following voting methods,” and it opens by confirming that an association “is not required to provide an owner with more than one voting method.” An association that offers absentee ballots and nothing else continues to satisfy subsection (a-1).
What the amendment does is make the electronic ballot a sufficient method where previously it was not on the list. An association that wanted to run elections electronically had to reach that result through its dedicatory instruments; it is now available under the general statute.
Remote meetings, written into three places
The rest of SB 2629 deals with how meetings may be held, and it amends the condominium chapter and the property owners' association chapter in parallel.
New Section 82.108(b-1) provides that “[a] meeting of the association may be held by any method of communication, including electronic and telephonic means as provided by Section 6.002, Business Organizations Code.” New Section 209.0056(d) gives owners' meetings under that section the same authority in nearly identical words. And new Section 82.110(d) adds that condominium “[v]oting may be conducted electronically as provided by Section 6.002, Business Organizations Code.”
All three route through the same Business Organizations Code provision rather than creating a separate standard inside the Property Code.
Board meetings: the carve-out that did not move
Section 82.108(c) was restructured but its substantive limit survived. A condominium board meeting may be held by any method of communication only if notice has been given under subsection (e), “each director may hear and be heard by every other director,” and:
“the meeting does not involve voting on a fine, damage assessment, appeal from a denial of architectural control approval, or suspension of a right of a particular association member before the member has an opportunity to attend a board meeting to present the member's position, including any defense, on the issue.”
The same four categories constrain the written-consent route in new subsection (c-1), which also requires that “a record of the board action is filed with the minutes of board meetings.”
What the 2025 amendment removed from subsection (c) was its opening qualifier. The prior text began “Unless the declaration, bylaws, or articles of incorporation of the association provide otherwise”; that phrase is struck in the enrolled version. The remote-meeting authority is now statutory rather than a default a declaration could switch off.
The housekeeping amendment worth noticing
Section 1 of the act modernised Section 82.101 to refer to a “certificate of formation” issued “under the Texas Corporation Law,” replacing citations to the repealed Texas Business Corporation Act and Texas Non-Profit Corporation Act. Sections 82.108(d) and (e) received the same treatment, now pointing to Business Organizations Code Sections 6.051, 6.052, 22.156 and 22.217 for notice. These are conforming changes rather than new duties, but they are the sections a reader is sent to when the bylaws are silent on notice.
How the amendments are codified
The act is Acts 2025, 89th Legislature, Regular Session, Chapter 79. The official source note to Section 209.0056 records the amendment as “Acts 2025, 89th Leg., R.S., Ch. 79 (S.B. 2629), Sec. 4, eff. September 1, 2025,” sitting after a 2011 addition and a 2015 amendment.3 That is the chain a reader tracing the section's history will find.
What to watch next
Section 6.002 of the Business Organizations Code, not the Property Code, is now the source of the operative standard for remote meetings and electronic voting in Texas associations. A future amendment to that general corporate provision would reach community associations through these cross-references without the Property Code being touched.
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