Five Years of Election Manipulation — 2022 to 2026
Quorum failure is a math problem. What follows is not. Below is what happened to your right to choose your own directors, one year at a time — from the Association’s own minutes, its own mailings, and the public court file. Nothing on this page is my opinion; every year ends with where you can verify it.
2022
Three people apply. The Board announces no election is needed.
No election was held in 2022. This was not for lack of interest: applications were received. The Board’s own record for July 16, 2022 reads:
Their own produced records label it “Election update — No election.” No election, no reason stated to the membership, no election records — even though there were applicants who provably signed a Board Packet receipt list and confirmed their resumes with the office. The pattern (or something like it) that would define the next four years was set: when the seat can be filled without asking the owners, make it easy — and don’t ask the owners.
2023
The election fails — and the Board fills the resulting vacancy itself.
On August 19, 2023, the annual election’s rules were compromised — and it also failed for lack of quorum: 2,024 ballots mailed, 428 needed, 248 valid ballots received, with 17 ballots rejected and 163 mailings undelivered. The board simply “remained in office.” When Director Roger Clifton resigned after the failed election, the Board did not call for the owners to fill the seat — it appointed Jessica Miller to it. Then, two months later that same year, Director Brian Vargas resigned in late October — and the December 2023 open-meeting minutes confirm what happened next: then-President David Drake nominated Brian Keating — an owner of record for less than 19.5 months, and, as my filed cross-complaint alleges, Drake’s own professional associate — to fill the vacant seat, then abstained from the vote. Appointed First Vice President, bypassing any membership vote. Did neither of these two departing Directors think to resign before the 2023 election — make the effort to vacate the seat and GIVE YOU the opportunity to fill it? Why has appointment to the Board become so customary?
Note what the numbers say: the quorum bar sat at 428 while participation ran at 248. The Board knew — from a 2023 attorney email in the record — that lowering the quorum was the available fix. It did not lower the quorum. A threshold that keeps failing is a threshold that keeps the appointment power in the boardroom.
2024
Three challengers disqualified — while five incumbents ride the ballot.
In 2024, three candidates — myself, Frank Clifton, and Cody Oliver — were kept off the printed ballot, each disqualified for a different stated reason, and relegated to write-in status. Five sitting directors ran on that same ballot as incumbents. Forced write-in candidacy under cumulative voting is a structural handicap: your supporters must know to write your name on the ballot, while the incumbents’ names are printed and placed in front of every voter. Insult to injury — and the tipping point, captured: the Directors were allowed to cumulate their votes while the write-ins were not. Any extra cumulative votes a write-in received were thrown out if greater than one vote cast per write-in.
The election again fell short — the highest participation ever recorded, and still short — so the Board went to court. They did, because they had to: all five incumbents were on that ballot, and they had stacked it well. On December 17, 2024, a judicial order was obtained validating the election. The ballots were finally counted in January 2025 as a “continuation” of the August vote — a vote that could have been extended, but never was. Read that again: the year the challengers were removed from the ballot is the year the Board asked a judge to bless the result.
2025
The rules change mid-game — and my candidate statement is redacted: edited without notice.
In February 2025 — at Brian Keating’s first meeting as President — the Board announced the Ranch would “no longer operate under Davis-Stirling law” and reset quorum to “25% of owners in good standing” (Exhibit 2). The election law it had selectively enforced against challengers in 2024 was now, when it constrained the Board, declared not to apply.
Then it got personal. On June 26, 2025, I objected in open court to the Board’s sudden declaration that we would no longer adhere to Davis-Stirling. A few days later, approximately fourteen words were removed from my candidate statement in the ballot materials — without notice to me and without legal authority or basis. Civil Code §5105 prohibits editing or redacting a candidate’s statement. I discovered it when I opened my own ballot. Having endured three years of election manipulation, I requested IDR — and when it was denied, I challenged that election the way the law allows any owner to: through a small-claims filing. The Board’s unwillingness to discuss things was underscored by their response, which arrived on November 3, 2025 — the lawsuit this website documents (Exhibit 1). Instead of resolving the Board’s conduct and decisions over burgers at the rec center, they initiated a legal dispute costing many tens of thousands of dollars, rather than correct course and adhere to common election-law practices enforceable by the State of California.
2026
A postponed election, two different explanations, and a meeting nobody can produce.
The 2026 election — the one this website exists for — was postponed, for the first time in our history. The Association’s June 8 email to owners said the postponement was intended to “get out the vote” — except the voting hadn’t even started, and “getting out the vote” is what happens when a failing quorum results in an extension of time to vote, not a delay before voting begins. At the June 20 open meeting, the Secretary read a prepared statement describing an “emergency meeting,” conducted by Zoom, at which the Board took that action — giving a different reason than the one mailed to owners. Asked on the spot for the date of that emergency meeting and any documentation of it, the Board produced none; no such item appeared on the posted agenda.
Meanwhile a Board seat came vacant mid-election — with six qualified candidates already standing for three seats. On July 24, I asked the Board in writing to leave that seat to the members: place it on the very ballot already underway, where the fourth-place finisher serves the unexpired term. Instead, the Board solicited appointment applications. An appointment made with ballots about to be printed substitutes the Directors’ choice for the owners’ choice — at the exact moment the owners are already in the act of choosing.
Five consecutive years. Each incident has an explanation; together they form a pattern the membership can see. Elections are how owners supervise directors. When elections stop working — and stay broken while the fix sits in plain view — supervision is the thing that has actually failed. As Americans, we know how free and fair elections work. So do the owners.
Documents referenced on this page that are not yet in The Lawsuit & Exhibits are being prepared for posting. To request any of them now, use the contact form.