OWNER MEETINGS · VERTICAL HOUSING
Sixty-one percent, according to the person who counted.
A building votes on a facade repair. It is not one owner one vote. Weight follows floor area, because that is what the deeds say, so a penthouse carries several times a studio. The manager tallies it and announces the motion passed.
Nobody in the room can check that number, and the levy that follows runs to tens of millions per unit.
The weights are in a spreadsheet. The proxies are in a folder. An owner who wants to verify is asking to audit the person who runs their building.
WHY THE ARITHMETIC IS UNVERIFIABLE
Everyone must accept a sum almost nobody can perform.
The weights are not secret in principle. Unit sizes sit on the deeds. In practice no owner holds the full register, so the denominator is whatever the manager says it is.
Nobody holds the whole register
An owner knows their own area. The total against which it is measured is held by one party, and that party is the one announcing the result.
Proxies move weight invisibly
An owner can authorise someone else to vote their share. Where those authorisations went, and whether they were counted as instructed, is not visible to the person who granted one.
Narrow margins are the norm
Repair motions pass or fail by a few percent. At that margin, an error nobody can detect is indistinguishable from one nobody made.
Checking means accusing
Asking to see the working is treated as an allegation against the manager. So owners do not ask, and the number stands.