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

Wisconsin splits its board-election rules along a single line: is the community a condominium or not? The Wisconsin Condominium Ownership Act governs condominium board elections.

Everything else — the non-condominium planned communities — runs on its own recorded declaration, its bylaws, and, where the association is incorporated, the Wisconsin Nonstock Corporation Law. The state has never passed a comprehensive planned-community statute.

The Condominium Ownership Act, Wis. Stat. ch. 703, is Wisconsin's own condominium law, and it sets the election-relevant rules for the association, its board, and how unit owners vote.¹ A non-condominium planned community elects its board under the community's recorded declaration and the association bylaws, and Wis. Stat. ch. 181, the Nonstock Corporation Law, supplies the default rules for electing directors, setting their terms, removing them, and filling vacancies whenever the association is incorporated.²

Wisconsin has not adopted the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act. The Condominium Ownership Act stands on its own, so the UCIOA's declarant-control and deemed-ratification features never come into play.

Election disputes go to the Wisconsin Circuit Courts, with appeals to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals — which sits in four districts — and discretionary review by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.³ So Wisconsin is a condominium-statute state with no comprehensive planned-community statute, and that means one question controls the source of every board-election rule: condominium or planned community? The sections that follow lay out the framework, the operational mechanics, and the recent activity.

Section 2: The election framework

2A. The Wisconsin Condominium Ownership Act and condominium board elections

The Condominium Ownership Act runs condominium board elections in Wisconsin. Section 703.15(1) hands every policy and operational decision to the association's board of directors, except for the matters the chapter, the declaration, or the bylaws reserve to the members.⁴ Section 703.10 then requires every condominium to operate under bylaws, and it spells out what those bylaws must cover: the election of a board of directors, of whom no more than one may be a non-unit owner; the number of directors; a rule that the terms of at least one-third of the directors expire every year; how the community selects and removes directors; how it calls meetings; the quorum; and how it notifies owners.⁵

The Act fixes the architecture and the outer limits. It leaves the specific numbers — board size, term length, quorum percentage — to the declaration and bylaws.

The Act also runs the handoff from declarant control to a board the owners elect. Section 703.15(2)(c) caps declarant control at the earliest of three points: ten years for an expandable condominium, three years for any other condominium, or thirty days after the declarant conveys 75 percent of the common-element interest to purchasers.⁶

Owners gain a voice before that handoff arrives. Section 703.15(2)(d) requires that owners other than the declarant elect at least 25 percent of the board before 25 percent of the common-element interest is conveyed, and at least 33 1/3 percent before 50 percent is conveyed.⁷

Then, no later than 45 days after declarant control expires, section 703.15(2)(f) requires the association to hold a meeting where the unit owners elect an executive board of at least three directors, along with the officers.⁸ This is Wisconsin's own statutory scheme. It is not the UCIOA declarant-control model, and it carries no California-style election machinery — no mandatory secret ballots, no independent inspectors of election.

Footnotes

1. Wis. Stat. ch. 703, Condominium Ownership Act ↩
2. Wis. Stat. ch. 181, Nonstock Corporations ↩
3. Wisconsin Court System, Court of Appeals (four districts) ↩
4. Wis. Stat. s. 703.15(1) ↩
5. Wis. Stat. s. 703.10(2) ↩
6. Wis. Stat. s. 703.15(2)(c) ↩
7. Wis. Stat. s. 703.15(2)(d) ↩
8. Wis. Stat. s. 703.15(2)(f) ↩
9. Wis. Stat. s. 703.03 (application of chapter) ↩
10. Wis. Stat. s. 181.0803 ↩
11. Wis. Stat. s. 181.0804 ↩
12. Wis. Stat. s. 181.0805(1) ↩
13. Wis. Stat. s. 181.0806 ↩
14. Wis. Stat. s. 181.0808 ↩
15. Wis. Stat. s. 181.0811 ↩
16. Wis. Stat. s. 710.18 ↩
17. Wis. Stat. s. 181.0802 ↩
18. Wis. Stat. s. 703.15(4)(c) ↩
19. Wis. Stat. s. 703.15(4)(d) ↩
20. Wis. Stat. s. 703.15(4)(e) ↩
21. Wis. Stat. s. 703.10(2)(a) ↩
22. 2025 Wisconsin Act 129 (Correction Bill) ↩
23. McLaughlin v. Gaslight Pointe Condominium Ass'n, No. 2023AP1011 (Wis. Ct. App. Dist. II Apr. 17, 2024) ↩
24. 31 C.F.R. § 1010.380, Reports of beneficial ownership information (current text on eCFR) (ecfr.gov) (domestic-entity exemption for entities created by filing with a U.S. secretary of state or similar office). ↩