Andrea Peterson: 0:00

Year after year, we do see a higher increase or an increase in the the online voters versus paper voters, which overall will increase participation. It will also lower the cost of the direct costs for postage paper mailing products. So, having an inspector that can do both can certainly increase participation and therefore achieving quorum on the first go around.

Announcer: 0:29

HOA Insights is brought to you by five companies

that care about board members: 0:31

Association Insights and Marketplace, Association Reserves, Community Financials, Kevin Davis Insurance Services, and the Inspectors of Election. You'll find links to their website and social media in the show notes.

Robert Nordlund: 0:45

Welcome back to HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas. I'm Robert Nordlund, and I'm here today for episode number 174, with a special guest appearing back on the program. I'm speaking, of course, about Kurtis Peterson from the Inspectors of Election, a sponsor for this show, and I showed up for this recording, and I found out that he's invited his CFO Andrea Peterson on the show also. So we have a special benefit today, having two people from the Inspectors of Election on the show. Now, it's dangerous for me to think back about the elections we did for our condominium association back in the 80s, that's where I go when I think of my experience. Now we live in a very different, more complicated world. Now everything receives more scrutiny and it's viewed with more skepticism, and we haven't even begun to speak about the higher degree of litigation that we have in our society. So today we'll have the special treat to hearing from Kurtis and Andrea from Inspectors of Election to hear kind of the behind the curtain story about what goes on in an electronic election support company nowadays. Well, we're here weekly, so if you missed episode number 173 last week with a former law enforcement officer turned amazing board member, well, of course I'm speaking about Don Boswell, and if you didn't like hearing what he had to say about service leadership-and I mean to say service leadership, not servant leadership-I hope you at least enjoyed hearing the confident, reassuring voice of a Virginia gentleman. I just enjoyed speaking with him, just the the audio of it. Well, if you missed that episode or any other prior episode, take a moment after today's program to listen from our podcast website, hoa insights.org, or watch on our YouTube channel. But better yet, subscribe from any of the major podcast platforms or our YouTube channel so you don't miss any future episodes. Now, becoming a subscriber is something we care about because it increases our podcast search ranking in the search results, and it helps others find this free resource so they can be better equipped to lead their association. And those of you watching on YouTube can see the HOA Insights mug I have here. Kurtis, do you have a HOA Insights mug.

Kurtis Peterson: 3:01

No, I haven't gotten to the merch section yet. Okay, well, we'll make sure

Robert Nordlund: 3:06

we we now I'm on the record. I'll I'll make sure we get a couple to you guys. You can see our what we have in the merch store on HOA insights.org, or the link in the show notes. And while you're there, at least download a free Zoom background that you can use for your next board meeting when you confidently announce your election results. Okay, so we enjoy hearing from you, responding to the issues you're facing at your association. So if you have a hot topic, a crazy story, or a question you'd like us to address, you can contact us at 8033130, or email us at podcast at hoa insights.org. We do try to shape our episodes based on what you ask and the stories you tell us, but today's episode is on me. Elections are one of those things that you don't think about when they run smoothly. You only hear about it when they fail miserably, and I'm not sure if there's really much middle ground in between the two. So, welcome back to the program, Kurtis, and welcome, Andrea. Tell me to start. What were you guys doing earlier today before we started recording this episode?

Andrea Peterson: 4:16

Well, I was just about to start doing some pricing structures,

Kurtis Peterson: 4:21

and I was putting together election packages, amendment election packages, putting out emails to start online voting for a few associations, and preparing call for candidates, pre-ballot notices. I don't know, Robert. How long is this program? I've been here since 6o'clock, and it's 1o'clock already. So I yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. Well, I got another six hours to go. So

Robert Nordlund: 4:55

yeah, sounds like the life of a small business owner. I remember talking. To an attorney who said he enjoyed having his own firm, his own practice, because he only worked half time, six a.m. to 6p.m. seven days a week. That's right, and that's that's life. Anyway, um, let's go back.

Well, let me ask: 5:15

Is what you do seasonal? You talked about an amendment package, things like that. Are there different flavors of elections that come through the year, or is it somewhat a constant randomness?

Kurtis Peterson: 5:28

It's pretty consistent. It and for us, it it ebbs and flows with with different parts of the country and even different parts of the state here in California where we're based, so we'll see a lot of elections in it in a certain region in California. In in other states, we see a lot of elections in one month. So it all kind of fluctuates. But for us, it's you know we're we're busy year round. We slow down from you know Christmas through New Year's, and and to look good in July, but other than that, it's it's it's all the time.

Robert Nordlund: 6:10

I can imagine that. Is there at least an annual meeting season or anything like that, or do you have higher amount of maybe special assessment votes in the summer when people are starting to think about budgets and they realize how much money they do or don't have.

Kurtis Peterson: 6:27

No, I would say because that that really it really is dependent on the association itself, you know. So it really goes from association to association.

Robert Nordlund: 6:39

Okay, and do you find that maybe you'll start with a a big annual meeting, annual election type thing, where they're electing all the board member candidates, and they say, "Holy moly, that went smooth. We have an amendment coming up. We have a special assessment coming up. We have this coming up. And you realize, all of a sudden, you're doing two or three votes or elections or oversights per year for the same association.

Kurtis Peterson: 7:05

Yeah, and and a lot of times these associations will try to wrap them all into one, which can't necessarily be done because you've got different quorum requirements versus approval requirements, and so you can't put all these measures on the same ballot, right? If you're sending out multiple ballots at the same time, then you you tend to get some corruption in one of them. Well, they'll be returning a paper ballot back in the wrong envelope that shouldn't be in there, and so that

Andrea Peterson: 7:38

dilute both.

Kurtis Peterson: 7:39

Yeah, dilutes both votes. Or, but you get you get you know voter exhaustion is really what it amounts to. I already voted on this. Why am I voting again? You know. Yeah,

Robert Nordlund: 7:50

I was I was hoping you were going to say something like confusion rather than corruption because I think of you guys as absolutely preventing corruption, but I can imagine that you don't want to create one thing for an association where it says answer these four things by September one, answer these three things by October one, and we'll also send you a paper ballot for this other thing that you don't have to have back until November one. I would find that just too confusing. We

Kurtis Peterson: 8:21

try to separate those out as much as as possible. Sometimes the the boards are adamant about these, you know, two separate voting events going off simultaneously. As much as we try to, oh, tell them tell them not to do it. That's a it's a bad idea.

Robert Nordlund: 8:42

Yeah. Do they think that there's economies of scale or something like that? Yeah.

Kurtis Peterson: 8:47

Well, I think they think that well, if we mail all this stuff out together or we send it out all together, that we're only paying one price. It may be the case if you're talking about direct costs of of postage and envelopes, but you know the printing is going to be the same, and you're like I said, you're gonna you're gonna dilute one of them if not both of those voting events because people are gonna mishandle how they handle, especially with the paper election package. You know the online is tends to be you know a little bit more streamlined for people when they're doing the online voting. You can keep those separate. But when you're when you're running a hybrid election with paper and online, and then having two paper ballots go out and sending out two sets of usernames and passcodes to log in for each voting event individually, it's it's a lot, you know. Yes, and and

Robert Nordlund: 9:43

maybe two different return envelopes: one for the election ballot and one for the

Andrea Peterson: 9:48

well, color code them.

Kurtis Peterson: 9:49

Yeah, color coded, and even when we do that, people will send back both ballots envelope. So it it gets messy, and and you know we just. It's it's tough. I mean, homeowner. Although it's all we think about all day, every day. You know that the ballots that come to people's homes is not what they think about. It's like I just I've got all this stuff all over. I don't know what to do with it. I'm not going to do anything. They'll figure it out, you know,

Robert Nordlund: 10:15

or they'll put the purple and the pink ballot in the same envelope because they see it's going to the same place.

Andrea Peterson: 10:22

Exactly. Realize that

Robert Nordlund: 10:24

one is for this election on this day, and one is for the revision of the governing documents, and there are different things for different purposes.

Kurtis Peterson: 10:32

Yep.

Andrea Peterson: 10:32

And once opened, can't count it for the next the next vote.

Robert Nordlund: 10:35

And then, of course, you've added the extra complication of did mr. and mrs. Smith from Unit Number 102 already vote electronically? So then we toss their paper one, or which one counts? So you've got a complex situation on your hands.

Kurtis Peterson: 10:52

Yeah, I first received, you know, and and normally the nine times out of 10, that's that's the online, right?

Andrea Peterson: 11:00

Gee.

Kurtis Peterson: 11:01

And then, but if we get a paper ballot and they go online, they they wouldn't be able to access their ballot because it always already showed up as as a paper ballot receipt. Yeah, and

Andrea Peterson: 11:11

cut them off from the electron. They can still go on there and and review the site, obviously, but they would be able to cast another ballot.

Robert Nordlund: 11:18

So they can go on site, and I've voted through the inspectors of election before, and I'm carried to the site. I see the overview of what's going on. I see the candidate profiles. I see the instructions. Vote for two of the five above, something like that. Whatever the instructions are for that, and I would imagine that if their paper ballot has been received, you can go back. You can look at it. You can review the candidate statements, but the vote now button is grayed out.

Kurtis Peterson: 11:52

Well, you just go to the ballot screen where you would cast your ballot, but it would state for on our system anyway. It would state your ballot, your paper ballot was received on the date it was received.

Robert Nordlund: 12:03

Got it. Okay, and like I think sometimes when I am driving and I got my navigation system going on in the car, and I miss a left turn, and then I realize I need to go to the post office, so I'm going somewhere else, and I'm really confusing the navigation system. I am so glad that it doesn't start giving me back talk. Like, dummy, are you really making all these wrong decisions? So good for you to not have your software say, "Hey, knucklehead, you already voted.

Kurtis Peterson: 12:37

Well, you never know. I mean, a paper ballot goes to a home with multiple owners. Oh, two or more owners, and and one of the owners casts the paper ballot, and the email to vote online is sitting into the other individual's inbox, and and we get the paper ballot back and we type it in, and then he goes to vote online and says,"Well, what do you mean? My vote's already been cast.

Robert Nordlund: 13:07

Oh, gee, you got my curiosity piqued. So, what if? Okay, there's at least two ways to own a home as a couple, right? Or maybe as an individual, maybe they haven't moved the home into what do you call it to joint property,

Kurtis Peterson: 13:27

a trust, a trust or something.

Robert Nordlund: 13:30

Okay, so what do you do? I'm taking you down a rabbit hole here. What do you do when mr. Smith owns the home? He's the legal owner, but the mail comes in and the spouse votes the ballot. Spouse is just a resident, not a legal owner. Is that

Kurtis Peterson: 13:50

not an owner on title? Well, then we have to compare that to our membership list that was provided to us, and if we do not show whoever signed for that ballot as a legal owner on title, then we have to deny that ballot.

Robert Nordlund: 14:08

Okay, good for you. Gee, this is complicated. What what got you into this business?

Kurtis Peterson: 14:16

Well, for me, nepotism. Okay, my mother, the late great Marge Peterson, founded the business with her business partner Mark, who has unfortunately recently passed away as well. I think I met Mark Slits.

Robert Nordlund: 14:33

Yeah,

Kurtis Peterson: 14:34

even to Mark, former

Robert Nordlund: 14:35

Navy guy, San Diego.

Andrea Peterson: 14:36

That's correct. Correct.

Robert Nordlund: 14:37

Okay.

Kurtis Peterson: 14:38

Yeah. So back in 2006, when the Davis Sterling Act went in went into effect,

Robert Nordlund: 14:47

that's California now.

Kurtis Peterson: 14:48

That is California. They started this business, seeing the need for the independent third party to oversee the election process to conform with with the civil code. They started it on. The three pillars of, you know, the best best people in the industry working for the company, totally independent third party administering the election, and the best technology put out to to handle the process.

Robert Nordlund: 15:21

That's a strong foundation.

Kurtis Peterson: 15:23

So that's how that started, and and I got involved with it, being the son of Marge and building websites and doing marketing materials, and and so they got me involved, and I've just grown with the business ever since.

Robert Nordlund: 15:41

Fantastic, and I think back. There's been so much change to the industry. It started, as you suggest, with someone just inspecting the election. It sounds like you grew with technology to have it be not just inspecting, but administering and also operating the Election online,

Kurtis Peterson: 16:03

yeah. Well, I mean, we it was mainly paper way back in 2006, but but ours has always been a turnkey operation as well. That you know, we we prepare the documents that go out, we receive all the ballots, we tabulate, we provide the results. That's that's an arm length kind of a stance for the manager and the board of directors that nobody can point the finger at them saying you had something to do with this election of which I'm not happy with. And the board and the management can say we had nothing to do with the election. You know, we contracted with the inspectors of election as a completely independent third party, they have no stake in the game in this association whatsoever.

Robert Nordlund: 16:46

Tell me, it started in California. How many states are? Do you know how many states are serving at this time? 20. Oh wait, wait, wait. That's radio silence.

Andrea Peterson: 16:56

Yeah, 25,

Kurtis Peterson: 16:58

maybe 25.

Robert Nordlund: 17:00

For those of you not watching on YouTube, 25,

Kurtis Peterson: 17:04

half of them, half of them. I don't know,

Robert Nordlund: 17:06

half of them. Yeah, okay. It was fun.

Kurtis Peterson: 17:08

I'd start. I could spew them off, but we don't have that much time in this program. But yeah, I mean, we're working across the country in in many states. Not not all of them, but but a lot of them.

Robert Nordlund: 17:19

Very nice. Well, I'm looking at the time. It's probably about time to take a quick break and hear from one of our general sponsors. After which, I want to come back and hear more about how COVID changed things, your vision for the future of the industry, and generally provide more common sense for common areas.

Russell Munz: 17:36

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Robert Nordlund: 18:08

And we're back. Well, before the break, we're having a great conversation with Kurtis Peterson and Andrea Peterson, CEO and CFO, respectively, of the Inspectors of Election. And during the break, we started to talk more about how things change and what brought them to where they are here today, and the question I wanted to ask was: What changed in your business after COVID? How did COVID affect the work that you guys do?

Kurtis Peterson: 18:31

I don't know if it was after COVID, during COVID, or while COVID was was introducing itself. We had a pretty extensive growth spurt in 2020 with with a change in law here in California requiring that the inspector of election not be anyone that's under contract with the association, which made managers ineligible to act as the inspector of election. When I say under contract, the only the inspector of election, if that's all they're doing, maybe under contract with the association. We had an influx of business at that point, and historically, we've always gone in California here anyway, and in other states. But in California, here we've always traveled to open and tabulate ballots in in front of the membership at a at an annual meeting or special meeting for that purpose. When COVID hit, we switched to this online virtual venue for conducting elections, and we're actually in one of our meeting rooms right now. Members can view the opening in the in the tabulation in in real time, right? And so we've gainable ballot, and so we drop the ballots in. They can see the numbers populate.

Robert Nordlund: 19:52

Really,

Andrea Peterson: 19:53

share screen so that they can watch the live tabulation as the scanner inputs the data.

Kurtis Peterson: 19:59

Sure.

Robert Nordlund: 20:00

And you record that? I trust

Kurtis Peterson: 20:01

we do not.

Andrea Peterson: 20:02

We do not know. Sometimes, sometimes the board will want it recorded. I mean, certainly can if that's something that they want to do.

Kurtis Peterson: 20:08

We don't normally do that, but

Robert Nordlund: 20:12

yeah, I didn't know. I didn't know if they want to see and document that process, or they just want results.

Kurtis Peterson: 20:19

A little bit of both. Well, people, you know, I don't know if a lot of meetings really record when they're live, and so when we listen to a virtual venue, I mean, there's some some associations that recordings not allowed. It's situational basis. Somebody wants to record, then then that can happen. We don't care either way. We really got nothing to hide.

Robert Nordlund: 20:39

Well, you said earlier it depends on the association. It depends on the state. It sounds like so much of what you do is absolutely custom.

Andrea Peterson: 20:47

Every election is custom. Yep. Okay.

Kurtis Peterson: 20:51

But with COVID, you know, we having to go out with this influx of business out to we're in North San Diego County, having to go to Chula Vista, all the way up to San Francisco, up to the desert. It's tough to go too far west here

Robert Nordlund: 21:08

without a boat.

Kurtis Peterson: 21:08

Yeah, Alina, that you know we can't can't do five or six elections a day like we're doing now. If we had to be on site for all of those, that changed our business, I think, dramatically, and not only our business, but you know, all the inspectors that handle you know these associations in California. Anyway, it changed the layout, and so now with this new virtual platform, it it makes it a lot less expensive for the associations with all that travel time, I mean, we travel four hours to do a 15-minute meeting. It just doesn't make sense.

Robert Nordlund: 21:49

Well, so it sounds like the your online election capabilities. I would assume that's a lot less expensive solution because you're not mobilizing a live person to sit in the car for a while,

Kurtis Peterson: 22:01

right? Well, I mean, when we're there's a difference when we're talking about let's make sure we're we've got apples and apples here. Okay, we've got online elections. We're talking about online voting, but we're talking about is is actually attending meetings in person site versus virtually in a platform like this, where we can show the opening and the tabulation of many of the paper ballots.

Robert Nordlund: 22:24

Got it.

Kurtis Peterson: 22:25

But the online voting reduces the number of actual paper ballots we have. If we're doing let's say 100 unit association and we're only mailing paper ballots to five of those members, you know. We're only get two or three back, if any. Yep. And so there's there's no need for us to show up on site.

Robert Nordlund: 22:52

Yeah. And they're going to mail it to your office.

Andrea Peterson: 22:54

Those five people.

Kurtis Peterson: 22:56

Yeah. Those five people would mail it to our office, and then we can open and tabulate in in this scenario here, that's what mainly back to I guess the the main question COVID that that changed our business tremendously, the

Andrea Peterson: 23:09

ability to and and the ease of access to the different virtual platforms that really became available, and then everybody's comfortability with that. And before COVID, I never went to a Zoom meeting. I, you know, I didn't really know what that was or the virtual aspects. Yeah, so that really it helped in many ways. You know, we were able to conduct more meetings in one day. We were able to not have to charge that travel time and having our inspector sit for four hours on a freeway or five hours on an airplane, a 15-minute meeting. So that was it. Was a great benefit to so still is a great benefit to the association with this platform.

Robert Nordlund: 23:53

Yeah, I like that. Well, let's take that same question about a different angle. What did COVID do to your clients?

Andrea Peterson: 24:01

Initially, it really backed up their meetings because everything was in Plano. We we couldn't go on site.

Robert Nordlund: 24:08

There's a lot of shutdown going on. Yeah,

Andrea Peterson: 24:10

yeah. We had to do quite a bit of makeup and restaggering of terms, if that was the case, or then the introduction to a virtual platform and getting people comfortable with that.

Robert Nordlund: 24:22

I've heard so many attorneys say that COVID made people more anxious. It made a lot

Kurtis Peterson: 24:30

more

Robert Nordlund: 24:32

incivility. Yeah, it seems like you're a company that fundamentally brings peace to an association, brings conclusion, and there's less opportunity for a board member to get something wrong. I can hear Kevin Davis in my head talking about the way a board member can make a decision that's wrong, an accident. They missed a page, or they. This is the way we've always done the election, and accidentally get something wrong, and all of a sudden they have a problem on their hands, and. You guys, you guys bring peace. We

Kurtis Peterson: 25:02

certainly like to think so, Robert. That's not always necessarily the case, you know. As you said, COVID anxious with a lot of these dissociations that we do. That's high anxiety, and we don't get involved in the politics, so we don't know what's going on behind the scenes, between interpersonal relationships, between board members or people trying to get on the board, whatever the case may be, we don't we don't want to be a part of that. We want to make sure that the election information goes out. It's legal. It's fair for all members. Everybody has the opportunity to cast their ballots, get them back to us, and that the tabulation that we do is timely and accurate, and more more important than timely is accurate.

Robert Nordlund: 25:51

So, if you have an online election that concludes at the end of day today, when do they get results? Next day,

Kurtis Peterson: 26:02

end of day today.

Robert Nordlund: 26:05

It's like, bang, instant.

Kurtis Peterson: 26:07

Well, you know, for most of the elections that we do, as soon as we that's cut off, we're we're tabulating the paper ballots and then adding in the online counts and certification is there. So it it doesn't doesn't you know? I mean, the online there's there's no time to count that, right? You run your report after the voting is done, that's up. I'll just use an example. We've got a meeting on Saturday.

Robert Nordlund: 26:33

Okay,

Kurtis Peterson: 26:33

80 ballots, 100 ballots, something like that. All the rest of the people voted online. There's hundreds of those. I don't even know how many

Andrea Peterson: 26:41

400

Kurtis Peterson: 26:42

yeah something and then so whatever time it takes us to get out 100 ballots and run those through the scanner that's it so the polls close at 10 o'clock 10 a.m. I expect we'll be done by 1030

Robert Nordlund: 26:57

you don't have to wait for a committee you don't have to wait for two people to inspect. You don't have to wait for all this kind of stuff, and it's it's right. Like you said, it's accurate. Yeah, I like that. Does an online service does a service I shouldn't say an online service a service like yours help associations achieve quorum more frequently? Does it help there be? I want to say a competitive election process where you have more candidates. Does it lower the threshold to everyone being involved when they have the inspectors of election involved?

Kurtis Peterson: 27:34

That's kind of a loaded question, there, Robert. We wouldn't know if people weren't involved. That's a

Robert Nordlund: 27:40

good point because all you touch is the ones that you touch.

Kurtis Peterson: 27:43

Yeah, but we do have history from year to year with with associations, obviously. And if we're talking about participation and achieving quorum, you know, apathy really resides in in the associations that are running well, right? That if if things are going well in the association, good management, good board of directors, whatever the case may be, then there's apathy. If things are going south for whatever reason, then there tends to be more participation, and then, like you mentioned earlier, higher anxiety.

Robert Nordlund: 28:18

Interesting. So actually, lack of participation is potentially an indicator of everything being done well, so people don't have problems. It's almost like keep on going, keep on doing good things,

Andrea Peterson: 28:32

keeping on. What we have, we do have history, like Kurtis was saying, with associations that we are doing a hybrid voting event for, where year after year we do see a higher increase or an increase in the the online voters versus paper voters, which overall will increase participation. It will also lower the cost of the direct costs for postage paper mailing products. So having an inspector that can do both can certainly increase participation and therefore achieving quorum on the first go around, three to one. Right,

Robert Nordlund: 29:12

that's another C word: confidence. You you bring confidence. You bring peace and confidence. I like that, Kurtis, Andrea. Thank you so much for having you on the program. It's been great. You heard all my questions. I find this fascinating, and it's great to hear your comments on how to bring peace and efficiency to the election process. Any closing thoughts to add at this time,

Kurtis Peterson: 29:41

well, not not necessarily for me. I just want to thank you for having us on. This is always a treat to do this.

Robert Nordlund: 29:47

Oh, it's great to share a success story. If you'd like to get in touch with Kurtis or learn more about online voting, you can go to their website. Simply enough at the Inspectors of Election, all spelled out. Dot com to our audience. We certainly hope you learned some HOA insights from our discussion today that helps you bring common sense to your common areas. We look forward to having you join us for another great episode next week.

Announcer: 30:15

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