Two lawful paths
There are two lawful paths to a different board. The second is where most homeowner efforts fail — on arithmetic, not on support.
Route one: run candidates
The simplest path is the one nobody took here in 2024. Five owners took it in December 2025, standing for all five seats, and four stood in 2026. Under our Election Rules § 2.2.4, any qualified member may nominate themselves. When more qualified candidates run than there are open seats, the association must hold a full secret-ballot election with an independent inspector — the acclamation shortcut under Civil Code § 5103 stops being available.
Directors serve three-year staggered terms under Bylaws Article IV, Section 6, and Election Rules § 6.1 requires an election for a seat at least once every four years. Seats come open on a schedule.
Route two: removal before the term ends
Bylaws Article IV, Section 8 allows removal of one or more directors, with or without cause, by “a majority of the owners” at a duly called regular or special meeting. Bylaws Article II, Section 2 defines “majority of owners” as those holding 51% of the votes then entitled to vote.
Calling that meeting is not the hard part. Bylaws Article III, Section 4 obliges the President to call a special meeting on the petition of a majority of owners. Corporations Code § 7510(e) sets a lower bar: 5% of the members. Five percent of 192 is 9.6, so it takes 10 owners — not 97, and not 98.
That 192 is the association’s own count, made by the officer the law puts in charge of making it. Civil Code § 5110(c)(1) gives the inspector of elections the duty to “determine the number of memberships entitled to vote and the voting power of each,” and § 5110(d) makes an inspector’s report “prima facie evidence of the facts stated in the report.” The inspector’s certification for the February 15, 2024 meeting reads: “The number of members in good standing and entitled to vote on matters reported below at the Annual Meeting was 192.” The 148 distinct owner names further down this page count something else — how concentrated the holdings are, not how many memberships there are. Ten is the floor on the certified count; gather more than ten anyway, and name each signer’s unit, so the number cannot be argued with on the day.
What happens after a petition is delivered
Worth knowing before you sign anything: a petition that is ignored is not the end of the road.
Corporations Code § 7511(c) puts the association on a clock. On receiving a request from members entitled to call the meeting, the officer must cause notice to be given “forthwith”, and the meeting must be held at a time fixed by the board not less than 35 nor more than 90 days after receipt — a common interest development may take up to 150 days. Then the sentence that matters:
“If the notice is not given within 20 days after receipt of the request, the persons entitled to call the meeting may give the notice or the superior court of the proper county shall summarily order the giving of the notice.”
So if twenty days pass with no notice, the petitioners may give it themselves. That is why the mechanics matter as much as the signatures:
- Put the request in writing and address it to the Association.
- State that it is a request for a special meeting under Corporations Code §§ 7510(e) and 7511.
- Say plainly what the meeting is to consider.
- Keep proof of the date it was received. The twenty days run from the day the Association receives the petition, and certified mail with a return receipt is what fixes that date.
Sources: Corporations Code §§ 7510 and 7511 and Civil Code § 5110, read on leginfo; Bylaws Art. III § 4; Report of Inspectors of Election, Lisa Schwartz, for the 2023 election year meeting held February 15, 2024, for the count of members entitled to vote.
The cumulative voting problem
Our governing documents authorize cumulative voting for both the election and the removal of directors (Bylaws Article II, Section 1; Bylaws Article IV, Section 8). Election Rules § 3.2 describes how it works: a member may multiply their votes by the number of seats being filled and concentrate them on a single candidate.
Corporations Code § 7222(b) then provides that where cumulative voting is authorized, no director may be removed — unless the entire board is removed — when the votes cast against removal would be sufficient to elect that director if voted cumulatively.
The practical consequence: a director with a modest but loyal bloc is very hard to remove on their own. The statute’s own parenthetical, “unless the entire board is removed,” is the express exception — a removal aimed at the board as a whole does not get the same protection.
That is how the statute is built, not a loophole in it. Run it past a California HOA attorney before acting: the interaction between § 7222, the Bylaws’ 51% threshold and the quorum rules below is genuinely intricate.
Who holds the votes
The Association keeps a resident directory — one owner record for each of the 192 units, with a tenant record beside a unit that is rented out — and serves it to any owner with a login to the managing agent’s portal. Read on September 17, 2026, it says who the votes belong to.
- 147 distinct owner names hold 187 of the units; the other five list “Private Residence” where the name would be, and who holds them is not known. 138 of the 192 units belong to an owner who owns exactly one here — about 72% of the votes, one each.
- The largest single holding is 18 units. 18 of 192 is 9.4% of the vote.
- Five owners hold five or more units — 18, 6, 6, 6 and 5 — and between them 41 of the 192 units, about 21%.
- 6 of the 192 units are owned in the name of an LLC, a trust or a corporation.
These count owner names, not memberships. The membership figure the special-meeting threshold above rests on is the 192 the inspector of elections certified for the February 15, 2024 meeting.
For comparison, when the CC&Rs were restated in 1977 one partnership signed the consent pages for 93 units, nearly half of the roll, and a second partnership run by the same man signed for 64 more. Between them, 157 of the 192. The chart below steps through four moments the record can state, from the builder’s first bulk sale to the directory today.
December 1975
- M L M Investors: 93 (48.4%)
- Not placed: 99
McKeon Construction sells 93 units to one partnership in a single deed. Of the other 99, 64 go to a second partnership eleven months later; no deed we hold places the last 35.
December 1977
- M L M Investors: 93 (48.4%)
- Jamacha Associates: 64 (33.3%)
- Not placed: 35
The CC&Rs are restated. Two partnerships formed by one El Cajon family hold 157 of the 192 votes between them. The other 35 are the units neither partnership’s deed reaches.
June 1989
- Fish Family Trust and the Furstenfelds, jointly: 92 (47.9%)
- Everyone else, or not placed: 100
M L M Investors sold its last 92 units in one deed to a trustee in December 1988. Six months later all 92 passed as one undivided block to the Fish Family Trust and Gary C. and Janice K. Furstenfeld, half each. Jamacha Associates had sold its 64 by 1979.
September 2026
- The largest single holding: 18 (9.4%)
- The next four holdings: 23 (12%)
- Everyone else: 151
The largest holding is 18 units and the next four hold 6, 6, 6 and 5. 138 units belong to someone who owns exactly one. Nobody can carry a vote alone.
What 18 votes can do depends entirely on how many ballots come back, because cumulative voting lets them all go to one candidate. Under Election Rules § 3.2 a member multiplies their votes by the seats being filled; the units that guarantee a seat against any opposition are one more than the whole-number part of the seats sought times the ballots cast, divided by the seats on the board plus one. With five seats, that divisor is 6:
| Ballots cast | Units that guarantee one seat | Two seats | What 18 units guarantee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 51, as in 2024 | 51 ÷ 6 is 8.5, so it takes 9 | 102 ÷ 6 is 17, so it takes 18 | two seats of five |
| 98, a quorum | 98 ÷ 6 is 16.3, so it takes 17 | 196 ÷ 6 is 32.7, so it takes 33 | one seat |
| 192, every unit | 192 ÷ 6 is 32, so it takes 33 | 384 ÷ 6 is 64, so it takes 65 | none |
The same 18 units are a tenth of the membership and, against the 51 ballots of 2024, more than a third of the election.
Sources: Jamacha Greens Resident Directory, provided by Pernicano Realty & Management on its owner portal, read September 17, 2026 — the directory carries no date of its own; Bylaws Art. II § 1; Election Rules § 3.2; Report of Inspectors of Election, February 15, 2024; Restated Declaration of Restrictions, File/Page No. 527902, Book 1977, consent pages; Corporation Grant Deed, File/Page No. 364671, Book 1975, with its Exhibit "A", and Corporation Grant Deed, File/Page No. 400472, Book 1976, for the two 1977 holdings. The owner names behind the counts are not published here.
Quorum, and what AB 1458 changed
Bylaws Article II, Section 3 sets the quorum for a members’ meeting at a “majority of owners” — 51%, which is 98 of our 192. That is the obstacle that has historically defeated homeowner efforts everywhere: 107 of the 192 units here carry a tenant, about 56%, and the owners of those units vote from wherever they live.
AB 1458, effective January 1, 2024, addressed exactly this. Under Civil Code § 5115(d), a meeting to elect directors that fails for lack of quorum may be adjourned to a date at least 20 days later. At that reconvened meeting the requirement drops to 20% of the association’s members — in person, by proxy, or by secret written ballot received. 20% of 192 is 38.4, so it takes 39, against the 98 the September meeting needs.
To use the reduced quorum the association must give at least 15 days’ notice of the reconvened meeting, stating the date, time and location, the list of candidates, and that 20% will satisfy quorum.
That notice requirement cuts both ways. If the association intends to rely on the reduced quorum but fails to give the required notice, the reduced quorum is not available to it.
Two things about the adjournment itself are worth knowing.
The power to make it belongs to the members, not the directors. Corporations Code § 7512(d) provides that a quorumless members’ meeting “may be adjourned from time to time by the vote of a majority of the votes represented”. Our own documents say the same at Bylaws Article III, Section 6 — “the owners who are present at such meeting…shall have the power to call another meeting.”
The new date is bounded at both ends. Our Bylaws set a 48-hour floor, but that does not govern an election: § 5115(d) will not let a reconvened election meeting sit sooner than 20 days, and § 7511(d) provides that “No meeting may be adjourned for more than 45 days.” Twenty to forty-five days is the lawful range. What that looks like in the room is set out in How Directors Are Supposed to Be Chosen.
Proxies
Bylaws Article II, Section 4 permits voting by proxy. A proxy must be filed with the Secretary before the meeting, and must specify the matters on which it grants authority and how the vote is to be cast. Election Rules § 3.1.1 adds the outer limit: no proxy is valid for more than 11 months from the date it is executed.
Two things follow. A proxy that does not specify its matters can be rejected by the inspector of elections, who under Election Rules § 4.1.1(b) rules on the authenticity and validity of proxies. And 11 months is long enough to gather authorizations well ahead of a meeting, but it is a hard expiry — proxies gathered too early simply lapse.
A proxy is also not a secret ballot. Where a matter requires one under Civil Code § 5100, a proxy generally serves to establish quorum and obtain the ballot, not to replace it.
Last reviewed September 17, 2026