Removing a board member
You do not always have to wait for the next annual meeting. Some states give owners a statutory way to remove a director mid-term — often called a recall. The threshold, the paperwork, and whether you need "cause" are not national. Below are the three statutes this collection actually fetched: Florida, California, and Nevada. If you are not in those states, stop and read your nonprofit-corporation act and your bylaws. Do not copy a Florida written-agreement recall into a Nevada secret-ballot removal.
Florida: majority of all voting interests, with or without cause
Florida section 720.303(10) is the HOA recall statute. Regardless of anything to the contrary in the governing documents, and subject to developer-transition rules in section 720.307, any board member may be recalled and removed with or without cause by a majority of the total voting interests. That is a majority of all voting interests in the association, not a majority of a quorum at a poorly attended meeting. If only a specific class of members elects a director, only that class recalls that director.
Two paths.
Written agreement or written ballots, no membership meeting required. Serve the agreement or ballots on the association by certified mail or personal service. The board must notice and hold a board meeting within 5 full business days after receipt. At that meeting it either certifies the recall — effective immediately, with records and property turned over within 5 full business days — or refuses and proceeds to court or division arbitration. A member's revocation has to arrive in writing before the association is served. When a majority or more of the board is sought, the instrument must list at least as many replacement candidates as directors being recalled. Each director sought to be recalled gets a separate vote. Written ballots are not valid more than 120 days after they are signed. If a first effort is found defective, non-defective ballots may be reused once.
Membership meeting, but only if the declaration, articles, or bylaws specifically provide for it. Ten percent of voting interests may call a special recall meeting; notice must state the purpose; electronic transmission may not be used for that notice. After adjournment, the board again has 5 full business days to certify.
If the board does not certify, it has 5 full business days after its meeting to file a court action or a petition for binding arbitration under the condominium-arbitration procedures cross-referenced in 720.303(10)(d). If the board fails to hold the required meeting, the recall is deemed effective. Recalled directors who will not leave can be ordered out by the circuit court. A recalled director may challenge within 60 days after the recall is deemed certified. The division or a court will not accept a recall filing when 60 or fewer days remain until that director's scheduled reelection, or when 60 or fewer days have elapsed since that director's election.
Vacancies: if less than a majority of the board is removed, remaining directors may appoint; if a majority or more is removed, replacements come from the recall instrument or the meeting vote.
This is Florida chapter 720. Florida condominiums use a different recall subsection in chapter 718. Do not mix them.
California: removal is a secret-ballot election
California does not use Florida's "serve a stack of signatures and the board certifies in five days" model. Civil Code section 5100 says elections regarding removal of directors shall be held by secret ballot under the same article as ordinary director elections. That means inspectors, the 30-day nomination-style notices that section 5115 expressly applies to recall elections, double-envelope or electronic secret ballots, and the rest of the 5100 article. You are running a removal election, not handing the board a petition and waiting five business days.
Who has to vote yes is not in section 5100; it sits in the Nonprofit Mutual Benefit Corporation Law. Corporations Code section 7222 says any or all directors may be removed without cause if, in a corporation with fewer than 50 members, the removal is approved by a majority of all members, and in a corporation with 50 or more members, the removal is approved by the members (the Corporations Code defined vote). Class-elected directors are removed only by that class. Cumulative-voting protections can block removal of an individual director unless the entire board is removed. Except as provided in sections 7222, 7221, and 7223, a director may not be removed before the term expires.
Read 5100 and 7222 together. The procedure is the Davis-Stirling secret-ballot election. The vote math is the Corporations Code, plus anything stricter in your bylaws that is not preempted. If your CID is unincorporated, confirm which removal statute actually applies; section 5100 still claims the election procedure for incorporated and unincorporated associations.
Nevada: petition, then a secret-ballot removal election
Nevada Revised Statutes section 116.31036 (fetched from Nevada Public Law, citing the official NRS text) is a true recall statute with numbers.
Any executive-board member other than a declarant appointee may be removed with or without cause, notwithstanding the declaration or bylaws, if votes in favor of removal are at least 35 percent of the total number of voting members and a majority of all votes cast in that removal election. Both tests must be met.
A removal election may be called by units' owners constituting at least 10 percent of total voting members, or any lower percentage the bylaws specify. The petition must be mailed return-receipt requested, or served by a process server, on the executive board or the community manager. The association may not adopt a rule that prevents or unreasonably interferes with collecting those signatures.
If secret written ballots are used, they must be sent not less than 15 days or more than 60 days after the petition is received. Each owner gets at least 15 days after mailing to return the ballot. Only returned ballots are counted. They are opened at an association meeting; a quorum is not required for the opening and count. Incumbent board members, including the person targeted, may not possess, access, or help count the ballots before that meeting. The meeting to open ballots must be not more than 15 days after the return deadline and not later than 90 days after the petition.
Nevada's 35-percent-of-all-members test is why quiet communities fail recalls: not enough ballots come back, even when almost every returned ballot says yes.
If you are not in FL, CA, or NV
Many states have no HOA-specific recall statute. You are then in nonprofit-corporation removal (often a membership vote with a bylaw quorum) or a board vote to remove an officer from an officer title while the person remains a director. Do not advertise a "Florida-style recall" on a Facebook group in a state that does not have one.
Practical notes that travel better than the statutes: get the official membership list before you collect signatures; keep a chain of custody; do not let the targeted director handle the ballots; budget for the association's lawyer to fight certification. Recall is a legal process. It is not a group text.
This is general information from an AI helper, not legal advice. Confirm it against your documents and your state's law. If a deadline or hearing is coming up, talk to a licensed lawyer.