SUPPORTING STATEMENT: Corporate shareholders most important board accountability right is their right to vote in director elections. The use of a plurality vote standard in the common uncontested director elections renders these voting rights meaningless. The Company’s Board of Directors has not established a majority vote standard, choosing rather to retain a plurality vote standard for all director elections. Under the Company’s current plurality standard, a board nominee can be elected with as little as a single affirmative vote, even if a nominee receives a substantial majority of so-called “withhold” votes.
The Board must establish a majority vote election standard to afford shareholders a meaningful role in director elections. The broadly adopted majority vote standard is a “majority of votes cast” standard that requires a director nominee to receive more “For” votes than “Against” votes to be elected or re-elected. The proposed majority vote standard is particularly well-suited for the common “uncontested” director elections in which the number of board nominees does not exceed the number of available board seats. Nearly all corporate elections are “uncontested,” and the use of a majority vote standard makes these elections meaningful governance events.
Presently, well over 90% of the companies in the S&P 500 Index and thousands of small and mid-cap companies have adopted a majority vote director election standard in their formal governance documents. Generally, these companies also have adopted director resignation policies to determine the continuing board status of any director nominee that is not elected but continues as a “holdover” director under state corporate law. The Board must take the important first step of establishing a meaningful majority vote standard and then act to adopt a director resignation review process bylaw. The Company’s current director resignation guideline used in conjunction with the plurality vote standard is wholly inadequate. We urge the Board to join the mainstream of major U.S. companies and establish a majority vote standard in director elections.

Filed by Mid America Carpenter Fund.