It is needless to say that hundreds of thousands of company meetings take place globally every year, in which shareholders are requested to vote on the most varied issues. It is also needless to say that the hassles of such events, such as the manual collection and processing of significant volumes of votes (which can at many times can result in human errors), as well as the mandatory physical presence requested in many countries for shareholders or representatives can sometimes make the corporate voting process somewhat of a burden and discourage minority voting. Not to mention all of the costs involved.

According to the Society of Corporate Secretaries & Governance Professionals, the voting system has generally been a routine event in the past with company proposals receiving a high percentage of votes (often as much as 90%) without the need of special solicitation efforts, and minority stockholder proposals typically received less than 10% of positive votes, most of which have been done through proxy voting. The proxy voting process has tolerated this since there were very few contested votes. Recently, the Shareholders Communications Coalition launched a website to increase general public awareness on the system by which investors vote their shares in corporate events as many individual investors are unaware of what rights they have when owning equity securities. The effort is aimed at drawing attention to the rules and regulations adopted years ago by the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding proxy voting and shareholder communications which need reform.

As shareholder activism increases over the years, the voting process is gaining significant importance where all votes must fairly represent the long-term interests of all stockholders and minority shareholders are also increasingly recognizing that voting is not only a responsibility but a powerful tool that can be used to make their opinions count. Thus, ways to make the voting process easier and better are rapidly evolving.

The electronic proxy voting, where shareholders can vote on corporate issues remotely from computer terminals and votes are received directly by the company without being transferred by an appointed proxy, is one of these ways and has been gaining rapid global popularity over the past years, becoming a global standard of best practices for good corporate governance and proactive investor relationship development. In addition to the benefit of providing timely voting outcomes, the increasing costs savings on printed communication is considered to be in the best interest of shareholders, who also benefit from voting at a distance without being physically present at the meetings or bearing with the costs of appointing a representative.

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