For the first time in Big Canoe’s more than 50-year history, the November 2025 Board of Directors election failed to meet quorum. What followed was even more unusual: rather than following established Election Committee guidance, the Board stepped in directly to decide how the failed election would be handled—sidelining the very committee chartered to oversee election procedures. A re-election was declared under opaque authority, with no clear explanation grounded in the By-Laws or the Election Committee charter.
Now that re-election is failing as well. Just days ago, the POA sent an extraordinary e-blast urging property owners to vote, warning that turnout remains low and quorum is once again at risk. That is not normal—it is a warning signal that something fundamental has broken in the electoral process.
Why Participation Collapsed
Big Canoe is not a city but a relatively small community where word travels fast. The consistent message circulating quietly but widely is this: people have lost faith in the process. Whether through active protest or simple disengagement, many owners appear to be choosing not to participate. The reason most often cited is not apathy but fairness—particularly surrounding the Primary Election, where popular candidate J. Cornelius was repeatedly documented as having his campaign interfered with by the Election Committee, POA leadership, POA staff, and POA-influenced Facebook moderators within the community.
Cornelius ran on a platform of restoring transparency to Board decision-making. The institutional response to that platform was immediate, coordinated, and unlike anything seen in prior election cycles. That context matters because it explains why participation collapsed—and it leads directly to the numbers.
The Villas Conflict
Before examining the vote totals, one fact must be stated plainly: Petit Crest Villas controls 64 Class A Improved Lot votes, making it the largest single voting bloc in Big Canoe. Those votes are effectively cast as a bloc through management. At the same time, Petit Crest Villas has been allowed for years to operate a full-time commercial business out of a residential unit (Villa 636)—a use explicitly prohibited under Big Canoe Rule A.13. This violation has been open, documented, and tolerated, creating economic dependence on continued POA non-enforcement of the governing rules.
A voting bloc economically benefiting from selective rule enforcement cannot be considered independent. With that context established, the numbers speak for themselves.
FOBC fully detailed this voting conflict of interest in a previous article – Big Canoe Property Owner Puts the POA and Its Attorney on Notice
The Primary Election Math
In the September 2025 POA Primary Election, six candidates ran and four advanced to the general election. The certified results were:
Certified Primary Results:
- Lynette Howard: 1,730 votes
- Roger Hackler: 1,589 votes
- Bill Thurber: 1,568 votes
- Bob Kelley: 1,155 votes (4th place – advanced)
- J. Cornelius: 1,038 votes (5th place – eliminated)
- Mike Volk: 882 votes
The margin between advancement and elimination was just 117 votes—smaller than the voting power of Petit Crest Villas.
Petit Crest Villas controls 64 votes. In a primary election, those votes are cast once for each open seat, meaning the bloc can influence up to 256 vote selections across candidates. Now consider a simple, conservative shift: if just 64 votes moved from Kelley to Cornelius, the results would look like this:
With 64-Vote Shift:
- J. Cornelius: 1,102 votes (4th place – advances)
- Bob Kelley: 1,091 votes (5th place – eliminated)
No speculation. No assumptions. Just arithmetic. That swing falls squarely within the voting power of the Villas bloc, and it would have completely reversed the outcome—sending Cornelius to the general election and eliminating Kelley instead.
This is legally significant. When a conflicted voting bloc has the mathematical capacity to swing an election outcome, and that conflict remains unresolved, the election becomes legally contestable. The Petit Crest Villas votes weren’t just statistically meaningful—they were potentially determinative.
What This Means
J. Cornelius was widely regarded as the people’s candidate—popular, outspoken, and openly critical of opaque Board governance. After his elimination, the November General Election failed to meet quorum for the first time in Big Canoe’s history. Many residents disengaged, saying the final slate felt sanitized and pre-determined. The Board then unilaterally ordered a re-run, sidelining the Election Committee entirely.
When voters lose confidence that elections are fair, they stop participating. That is exactly what Big Canoe is witnessing in real time. When a conflicted voting bloc is larger than the margin of elimination, and that conflict is documented and unresolved, confidence in the election doesn’t weaken—it collapses. The math alone shows the primary outcome could easily have been different, meaning the process was compromised before the general election ever began.
The Path Forward
FOBC, BCMatters.org, and jcornelius.com/poa have already documented an election cycle marked by irregular procedures, selective enforcement, and extraordinary efforts to neutralize a transparency candidate. Taken together, these are no longer anomalies — they are a pattern.
For that reason, this election must be called off and postponed. No further voting should occur until the Villas violation is publicly acknowledged, corrected, and the process restarted under proper Election Committee authority. If the Board chooses to press forward anyway, property owners will be fully justified in challenging the legitimacy of the election — including in court.
Anything less guarantees a Board elected under a cloud it will never escape.
— FOBC Editor, February 2026
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