Coefficient Voting

Our community would like to drop the coefficient voting system and adopt one vote per owner.

Is this possible and has it been achieved elsewhere?

 Yes it is straight forward at a AGM or EGM . The matter first must be put on the Agenda 7 days prior to the meeting.

Then the community votes in favor on the same at the meeting. If the community has statues these are then ammended to reflect the same.

F.Parkinson Jacksons Administradores SL

 Hi, F Parkinson

Are you absolutely certain about your reply?

I have not researched this matter recently and unfortunately I don't have much time to do it at the moment, but there was no allowance in the LPH for eliminating the coefficient voting system and there were a few years ago, many  Court decisions confirming this interpretation of the Law.

Unless something has been modified in the last few years, the Law allows for contributions to the community to be made equally by all owners regardless of the coefficients if this system was registered in the statutes and the amendment of the statutes was approved by unanimous vote.  However, with respect to VOTING, it did not allow for the elimination of coefficients for the double voting requirements, which is mandatory.

I would therefore, appreciate it if you could elaborate a little bit further on your reply to make sure that your reply is correct.  Thanks in advance.

 Coefficient voting (and paying) is an anachronism and makes a mockery of so-called Spanish democracy. It should be swept into the dustbin of history and replaced by one person, one vote.                                                                                                                             

The difference in property size is reflected in IBI therefore unnecessary to discriminate between owners for other payments.

Hi Lobin ; Your post is correct in it"s detail and provided the same actions are followed by the community this method of voting and charging will apply only if the members choose to proceed with the same. . 

However when it comes to the law by challenge then the law by the letter will  hold up the right of co-efficent voting.The law is considered superior to community statues. 

The community by way of unanimous vote to adopt the 1 vote & equal payment to their statues has however decided how their community will run.Hence if unanimous there is no one wanting to make a challenge to the same & the members have what they want in their own democratic way of running their community. I certainly would never wish to advise against democracy in a community.Most administrators share the view that the community should have their wishes with regard to this point.

Where the problem usually finds it way to court in my experience is when you have a single large owner who wants to control the community for his own ends.This owner does not need to occupy any of the officer's posts but to control the voting gives him the power he requires. The said owner will need to have time & money to over turn the members in this instance.

I further comment this is probably the most lobbyed change sort in community law in Spain. Sadly that change has not arrived as yet.

I hope this is useful to you.

F.Parkinson jacksons Administradores SL

Coefficient voting (and paying) is an anachronism and makes a mockery of so-called Spanish democracy.

What's it got to do with democracy?  Democracy is the control of the state by the will of the free citizens.

It may have something to do with what's fair. It seems to me to be entirely fair that if you pay a given percentage of the community fees that you have a vote in line with that percentage.

" It may have something to do with what's fair. It seems to me to be entirely fair that if you pay a given percentage of the community fees that you have a vote in line with that percentage."

If you don't mind my saying so, that is a silly perspective. The basic tenets of democracy, however flawed, are one person one vote and all votes are equal. You are suggesting that big landowners votes should carry more weight than small landowners, or people who own no land at all. That sends us back hundreds of years.

I'm not sure calling someones perspective 'silly' is entirely helpful to your argument whatever it may be.

There is a world of difference between deciding the principles of governing a state and running a community.

There are a lot of 'silly' people around throwing the word democracy at everything but I'm sure you are not one of them are you?

I did not suggest anything at all about big landowners, that just came out of your imagination.

The basic 'tenet' of democracy is what I said it was 'the control of the state by the will of the free citizens' . One man one vote (for a representitive) is just the way we go about it, as it would be impractical to have 30 million people deciding each issue.

 I did not suggest anything at all about big landowners......

That may be so, but by association that is what your statement meant. The more land, the higher the fee, the more weight the vote carries, and I might add the people in the house do not have a vote, only the property has a vote.

I do not wish to get into a long drawn out polemic on this issue, but I would be interested to see other people's views.

There you go again. My statement did not mean anything of the kind.

Not sure this is going anywhere if you continue to tell the other person that he has said what you would have liked him to say. But consider this:

You own 51% of the shares in a company. Someone else owns one share (say 0.001%) do you think he should have equal voting rights?