This article has been scrubbed from Bloomberg Markets' website, along with much of the entire internet.
It speaks to the general corruption found throughout much of Wall Street and is an excellent source to be aware of for both for yourself and others - giving staunch credibility to the general theses much of this (and other) communities have been working on.
"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."
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 article speaks to one of the main mechanisms making that possible.