Election Reset: What Changed and What Didn’t

On or around April 28, 2026, homeowners received an email from Essex Association Management stating that the Annual Meeting was being postponed and that all previously submitted ballots and proxies would not be counted.

The reason given was “confusion” caused by two websites: lakewoodhillslewisville.com and samlo.net.

That explanation does not hold up. Not factually. Not legally. And not under any honest reading of what actually happened here.

Let’s go through all of it.

The Email They Sent

This is the complete communication homeowners received:

Dear Homeowners,

The Board of Directors, in coordination with Essex Association Management, has completed a review of the current election process in advance of the upcoming Annual Meeting.

During this review, it was identified that communications, voting materials, and instructions were circulated outside of the Association’s established and authorized election procedures, which may have created confusion regarding how ballots should be properly submitted.

Specifically, the websites lakewoodhillslewisville.com and samlo.net have circulated information and materials related to the election. These websites are not affiliated with the Association and are not authorized platforms for official Association communications, voting procedures, or ballot submission.

To clarify, official meeting notices, election materials, and voting instructions are issued exclusively by the Association through its management company on behalf of the Board of Directors. Any communications or materials distributed outside of these official channels are not recognized as part of the Association’s formal process.

The Board takes the integrity of the election process seriously. Any actions that attempt to circumvent established procedures, distribute unauthorized voting materials, or otherwise influence the outcome outside of official channels are inconsistent with the Association’s governance requirements and will not be recognized. This includes directing owners to revise or resubmit ballots through non-authorized methods.

To ensure fairness, consistency, and the integrity of the process for all members, the Board has determined that additional time and corrective measures are necessary.

As a result, the Annual Meeting will be postponed in its entirety.

A new meeting date, along with updated and clearly defined voting procedures, will be provided to all members in a subsequent notice.

Now let’s address every factual and legal claim in that email one at a time, because the details are everything.

Let’s Call This What It Is

This is not a scheduling adjustment. This is not an administrative correction. This is not a good-faith effort to protect election integrity.

What happened here has a precise legal description: two directors, acting without any documented board authority, used a third-party management company to interfere with and terminate a lawful election that was already in progress, after valid ballots and proxies had been submitted by homeowners through official channels.

That is not a characterization. That is what the timeline shows. And Texas law addresses it directly.

• Texas Property Code Section 209.00593 mandates that annual elections be held when board positions are set to expire. It does not give the board authority to terminate an election already underway because it dislikes the information homeowners have access to.
• Texas Property Code Section 209.0059(a) voids any provision or action that disqualifies a property owner from voting in a board election. Discarding already-submitted valid ballots produces the same result as disqualification. The mechanism is different. The outcome is identical.
• Texas Property Code Section 209.00592 establishes the only circumstances under which a submitted ballot may be disregarded: if the owner votes in person at the meeting, or if a floor motion differs from the exact ballot language. Disagreeing with outside information sources does not appear on that list. It does not exist as a legal basis anywhere in Chapter 209.
• Texas Business Organizations Code Section 22.214 requires that board actions be taken by majority vote at a properly noticed meeting with quorum. This email cites no meeting. No quorum. No recorded vote. No resolution number. If this decision was made through informal conversations between two directors and a management company, it is not a valid board action. It is not legally a board decision at all.

The stated justification for this postponement is that homeowners received information from outside official channels and may have updated their proxies as a result.

Read that slowly.

The board is arguing that homeowners becoming more informed and exercising a legal right explicitly recognized under Texas Property Code Section 82.110 is justification for canceling an election and discarding votes.

Texas courts have addressed this directly. In Prado v. Johnson, 625 S.W.2d 368 (1981), Texas courts established that election irregularities must actually render it impossible to determine the true will of the voters to justify invalidation. Homeowners reading factual information and voting accordingly does not come close to meeting that standard.

There is no legal theory under which what these websites did justifies what this board did. None.

The board knows this. That is why their email invokes words like “confusion” and “integrity” without citing a single specific statute or governing document provision that actually authorizes what they did.

Because that provision does not exist.

What does exist is Texas Election Code Section 273.081, which entitles any homeowner harmed by a violation of election law to injunctive relief. Under Hughs v. Dikeman, 631 S.W.3d 362 (2020), they do not need to prove irreparable harm to get it. The statutory violation is sufficient.

Every homeowner whose validly submitted ballot was discarded has standing right now.

This board and this management company made a calculated decision that the cost of resetting this election was lower than the cost of letting the votes be counted. That calculation may turn out to be very wrong.

1. What These Two Websites Actually Did

The board’s email makes specific factual claims about these websites. Those claims are inaccurate, and that matters both legally and factually.

samlo.net was a form-completion assistance tool. It helped homeowners correctly fill out the association’s own official blank ballot and proxy forms so they would not be rejected on technical grounds. The tool walked users through the fields on forms the HOA itself provided. That is the full extent of what it did.

After using the tool, every homeowner still had to print the form themselves, sign it themselves, and submit it directly to Essex Association Management themselves through the official process. samlo.net never received a single ballot. It never collected a single vote. It never touched the submission process. It had no access to any submitted form. It was a completion assistant. Nothing more.

lakewoodhillslewisville.com is a community information blog. It carries a large, bold disclaimer at the top of the page stating clearly that it is not affiliated with the HOA or its management. It is a personal communication channel operated by a sitting board director to share community information that does not otherwise get freely distributed to homeowners through official channels. It is the digital equivalent of a board member knocking on your door and saying here is what is happening in our neighborhood.

Neither site issued official ballots. Neither site collected votes. Neither site replaced or bypassed the HOA’s submission process. Every ballot and proxy that homeowners completed went directly to Essex Association Management through the association’s own official channels.

The board’s characterization of these sites is not a legal argument. It is a factually inaccurate statement used to justify a predetermined action.

2. Texas Law Does Not Give the Board This Authority

Texas Property Code Section 209.00592 governs HOA elections and specifies exactly when a ballot may be disregarded. The list is short and specific: if the owner votes in person at the meeting, or if a floor motion differs from the exact language on the absentee ballot. That is it. There is no clause, no subsection, and no provision anywhere in Chapter 209 that authorizes a board to cancel an ongoing election and void validly submitted ballots because it disapproves of information sources available to homeowners.

The governing documents do not explicitly authorize canceling or restarting an election once voting has begun. Without that explicit authority, this action exceeds the board’s legal powers. Texas Property Code Section 209.0059(a) further makes clear that any action disqualifying a homeowner from voting in a board election is void. Discarding submitted ballots achieves disqualification with extra steps. The label changes. The result does not.

3. Was This Board Action Even Legally Taken

This is the question the email carefully avoids answering, and it is the most important one.

Under Texas Business Organizations Code Section 22.214, a board action requires a majority vote of directors present at a meeting where a quorum is present. Under Section 6.201(b), the only lawful alternative is unanimous written consent signed by every single director entitled to vote on the action.

This email references no board meeting. No recorded vote. No quorum confirmation. No date of action. No resolution number. It was transmitted by the management company as though it were a routine administrative notice.

If this decision was made through informal conversations between two directors and a management company, without a properly noticed meeting and a recorded vote, it is not a valid board action under Texas law. It carries no legal weight. It is not a decision at all.

4. Helping Homeowners Fill Out Official Forms Is Not a Violation of Anything

The email specifically targets homeowners who may have used samlo.net to complete their forms and then updated their proxies. Let’s be exact about what that means legally.

A homeowner who used samlo.net to correctly fill out the association’s own proxy form, printed it, signed it, and mailed it directly to Essex Association Management did everything right. They used the official form. They used the official submission channel. The only difference was using a tool to ensure the form was completed correctly so it would not be rejected on a technicality.

Under Texas Property Code Section 82.110, proxies are explicitly revocable and a later proxy supersedes an earlier one. Under Section 209.00592(b)(2), a homeowner who votes in person at the meeting overrides any previously submitted ballot. The system is expressly built so that your most recent and most deliberate decision is the one that counts.

A homeowner correcting a previously submitted form and resubmitting it is not circumventing the process. It is using the process exactly as Texas law designed it to work.

5. A Board Director Can Communicate With Homeowners

The email implies that a community information blog operated by a sitting board director constitutes unauthorized interference with an election. That argument does not survive scrutiny.

Board directors are homeowners. They are elected to represent their neighbors. They have the same constitutional rights as every other homeowner, including the right to communicate, publish information, and talk to the people they were elected to serve. A blog with a clear non-affiliation disclaimer is not a rogue operation. It is a director doing exactly what directors are supposed to do: keeping their community informed.

The alternative the board is apparently promoting is that homeowners should receive information exclusively through the management company and the board majority. That is not governance. That is information control. And in a property owners’ association governed by Texas Property Code Chapter 209, homeowners have an explicit right to access information about their association and participate meaningfully in its elections.

6. Homeowners Have Always Discussed HOA Matters Outside Official Channels

The board frames outside communication as uniquely dangerous to this election. But homeowners in every HOA community in America discuss candidates, board performance, and voting strategy outside official channels every single day.

• Neighborhood Facebook groups discussing board decisions
• Group chats about candidates and voting intentions
• Conversations in driveways and at community mailboxes
• Flyers left on doorsteps
• Emails between neighbors

None of that has ever been treated as grounds to void an HOA election in Texas. The board did not develop a sudden principled concern about unofficial communication. They developed a specific concern about the facts being shared on these two particular websites and the effect those facts were having on how homeowners planned to vote.

That is a completely different problem. And it is one entirely of the board’s own making.

7. Essex Association Management Is Not a Neutral Party Here

Essex Association Management transmitted this email and participated in facilitating this postponement. Under Texas agency law, a management company acts as the HOA’s agent and may only take governance actions that the board has properly and validly authorized through a lawful board decision.

If the underlying board decision was not made at a properly noticed meeting with quorum and a recorded vote as required by Texas Business Organizations Code Section 22.214, then Essex had no valid authorization to execute this communication. A management company that facilitates an unauthorized board action does not escape liability simply because someone told it to. Both parties bear full responsibility for the legal consequences of this action.

Additionally, to the extent that any individual holding a Texas real estate license participated in or facilitated an action that exceeded authorized board authority or involved misleading communications to homeowners, that conduct may warrant examination under the Texas Real Estate License Act and applicable TREC regulations governing licensee conduct, agency authority, and representations made on behalf of a principal.

8. Homeowners Have Legal Remedies Available Right Now

This is not a situation where homeowners simply accept what happened and wait.

Texas Election Code Section 273.081 entitles any person harmed by a violation of election laws to injunctive relief to prevent the violation from continuing or occurring. Under Hughs v. Dikeman, 631 S.W.3d 362 (2020), the Texas Court of Appeals confirmed that where a specific statute provides for injunctive relief, the common-law requirements of proving irreparable harm do not apply. The statutory violation is the injury.

In Storck v. Tres Lagos Property Owners Association, 442 S.W.3d 730 (2014), a Texas court invalidated an HOA election where voting rights were improperly restricted in violation of Texas Property Code Section 209.0059(a). In In re Keenan, 501 S.W.3d 74 (2016), the Texas Supreme Court confirmed that homeowners have standing to challenge the sufficiency of votes and that courts may compel disclosure of ballots over privacy objections.

The legal infrastructure to challenge this action already exists and is well established. Homeowners who submitted valid ballots that were discarded have standing. The question is whether they choose to use it.

Bottom Line

Here is what actually happened, without the framing:

• A form-assistance tool helped homeowners correctly complete the association’s own official forms, which they then signed and submitted directly to Essex Association Management
• A community information blog run by a sitting board director published factual information with a clear non-affiliation disclaimer
• Homeowners became more informed, made intentional decisions, and submitted valid votes through official channels
• Two directors, without a documented board meeting, recorded vote, or cited statutory authority, used the management company to cancel the election and discard those votes before they could be counted

That sequence of events has a name. It is not a procedural correction. It is an attempt to reset an outcome that was no longer predictable. And Texas law does not permit it.

An election does not lose integrity because homeowners become informed. It loses integrity when the process is changed after votes are already cast.

Throwing out valid ballots is not a correction. It is a reset of the outcome.

And if the rules only hold when the results are predictable, they were never really rules at all.

What to Do When the New Election Is Announced

They will issue a new date and new procedures. When they do, here is exactly what to do:

• Verify the new notice complies with the 10 to 60 day notice requirement under Texas Property Code Section 209.0056
• Know that you cannot be disqualified from voting under Texas Property Code Section 209.0059(a), regardless of what new procedures they announce
• Complete your ballot or proxy through the official process and keep a dated copy for yourself
• Attend the meeting in person if at all possible, because your in-person vote supersedes any prior submitted ballot under Texas Property Code Section 209.00592(b)(2)
• If the board attempts another procedural reset without documented legal authority, injunctive relief is available under Texas Election Code Section 273.081 and you do not need to prove irreparable harm to get it
• Consider filing a complaint with the Texas Attorney General’s office, which has authority to investigate HOA violations of Texas Property Code Chapter 209

They reset the clock. They did not reset the facts, the law, or what you now know. Vote with everything you have.

This blog is operated independently and is not affiliated with the Lakewood Hills HOA, its Board of Directors, or Essex Association Management. It is a personal communication from a sitting board director to the community. All information published here is based on publicly available statutes, court decisions, and documented facts. Nothing on this site constitutes legal advice. Homeowners seeking legal counsel should consult a licensed Texas attorney.