this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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WhyDRS

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Corporate Voting Charade by B. Drummond || "... found evidence of overvoting—the submission of too many ballots—in all 341 cases." (web.archive.org)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by MozooZ@lemmy.whynotdrs.org to c/whydrs@lemmy.whynotdrs.org
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"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.

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[–] Chives@lemmy.whynotdrs.org 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] MozooZ@lemmy.whynotdrs.org 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Oh, also, another more recent tally found widespread overvoting, too.

In one of the latest tallies in 2018, there were 134 instances of overvoting, equating to 5.9 million votes being discarded and not counted.

source

And then this as just another example:

"We've seen problems which came really to the fore, particularly with Procter and Gamble's proxy fight, which nobody really knows what the outcome was. There were enough "hanging-chads," so-to-speak, that that was never really resolved."

[–] Chives@lemmy.whynotdrs.org 4 points 11 months ago

Great find!

[–] MozooZ@lemmy.whynotdrs.org 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Yep. Insanity.

From https://marketliteracy.org

Shareholders and the associated corporations/companies can be taken over / misguided / misled / duped by way of sham voting via short-selling and the subsequent counterfeit/phantom shares - where and when elections may result in highly questionable policies/decisions implemented, as well as an installation of corrupt officials & board members, resulting in dubious business-practices wherein ulterior motives are rampant, along with the potential creation of a lobbying, bribing, and (frankly) psychopathic organization.

Indeed, that's what has been happening.

When we hear talk about "corporations having too much power!" - this is one of the main mechanisms making that possible.

Much agreed on the DRS aspect, of course.