"In a little-known quirk of Wall Street bookkeeping, when brokerages loan out a customer’s stock to short sellers and those traders sell the stock to someone else, both investors are often able to vote in corporate elections.
With the growth of short sales, which involve the resale of borrowed securities, stocks can be lent repeatedly, allowing three or four owners [or more] to cast votes based on holdings of the same shares.
The Hazlet, New Jersey–based Securities Transfer Association, a trade group for stock transfer agents, reviewed 341 shareholder votes in corporate contests in 2005. It found evidence of overvoting—the submission of too many ballots—in all 341 cases."
For the record, this article has been largely scrubbed from Bloomberg Markets’ website, as well as the entire internet.
ALL 341 CASES!
Absolutely maddening. Overvoting is a well known issue which plagues the market and makes legitimate / trustworthy shareholder democracy impossible.
Direct Registration is the only way to be completely confident that YOUR vote was not only cast, but COUNTED.
Oh, also, another more recent tally found widespread overvoting, too.
source
And then this as just another example:
Great find!
Yep. Insanity.
From https://marketliteracy.org
Much agreed on the DRS aspect, of course.