Ballot results: what the committee can see, and what owners are entitled to inspect

Owners often assume ballot results must be kept anonymous and reported only as totals. In Victoria that is not what the Act provides. The Act does not require ballot results to be anonymised, and a committee — or a committee member acting in the role — can usually receive the detailed result, including how individual owners voted, as part of the records they are entitled to see.

Where the limits are

The right to records is not unlimited, and privacy is where the pressure is applied. The Act allows a person whose name or personal information appears in a record of the owners corporation to apply to VCAT for an order restricting access to it. Unless a restriction has been ordered, or another privacy obligation applies, the committee can obtain the full result consistent with the Act’s record-keeping and inspection provisions.

The other limit is judgement rather than law: disclosing how individuals voted to people who are not entitled to see the records risks mishandling personal information, and a committee that circulates a voting breakdown loses the confidence needed to run the next ballot.

How inspection works

• Records must be available for inspection at reasonable times.
• The owners corporation may supervise an inspection to prevent misuse.
• Copies can be provided for a reasonable fee — inspection itself cannot be charged for.
• Voting papers and ballots are only required to be kept for 12 months after the vote. Beyond that the physical papers may no longer exist, so an old result may simply be unavailable.

That 12-month rule is the practical answer to the most common complaint in this area: if you want to see how a vote was decided, ask while it still exists.

Where to go next

Online voting at your owners corporation covers how ballots are run; the glossary defines records, resolutions and VCAT.

Source: VIC: Q&A Access to results of a ballot, including each owner's vote by Ben Quirk, Senior Owners Corporation Manager at TOCS, published by LookUpStrata (October 2025 edition of The VIC Strata Magazine). This is a summary written by TOCS, not a reproduction of that article. Regulator guidance: Consumer Affairs Victoria — finance, insurance and record keeping.