Dakota Beacon

This year Georgia passed an updated voting law. Woke corporations -- baseball included -- stomped out of Georgia in a hissy fit. In 2020 Georgia passed pro-life legislation. More than 180 CEOs advertised in the New York Times declaring that pro-life laws are “bad for business.” Consequently, film studios threatened to stop filming in Georgia. In 2016 hundreds of companies threatened to leave Georgia after its legislature passed a religious freedom bill.

Dozens of major American corporations fund Planned Parenthood. Major American companies support policies restricting the Second Amendment. Corporations donate big dollars to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). In turn, the SPLC then uses the money to squelch conservative voices and fundraising.

Likewise, media “cancels” political opponents they deem speaking too freely against media allies. Corporations behave destructively in response to state legislative affairs.

Increasingly, American businesses play a major role in shaping American politics. Conservatives must realize that liberals dominate votes at annual shareholders’ meetings. The result? Corporate America marches left ignoring Middle America. Much of corporate behavior is the result of the left’s methodical shareholder pressure campaigns and these campaigns are yielding record support.

When it comes to voting, most Americans instinctively think of large national elections that occur in November. Beyond the federal, state, or local elections there is the franchise granted to corporate stockholders. Typically, a stockholder is entitled to one vote for every share of stock owned.

Many people own stock in corporations. Every publicly traded company must host an annual shareholder meeting. At these meetings, investors cast votes for board members, their compensation package, and management proposals, -- and shareholder proposals. This last category the left has been especially adept at influencing. Unfortunately, conservative investors don’t bothered to show up in person, or by proxy, to vote. Everyone is busy. Kids, grandkids, work, pandemic – all consume time. Corporate proxy voting slides out of mind.

Liberal shareholders advance their agenda through proxy voting – an agenda they could not achieve through government legislation. Think of reactions by Jack Dorsey at Twitter, Tim Cook at Apple, and Brian Moynihan at Bank of America if enough conservatives voted to oust board members, disapprove the executive compensation packages, and turn down proposals.

But alas, conservative investors are not voting. At last year’s Apple shareholder meeting, Tim Cook received 98 percent of the shareholder votes cast. However, 30 percent of the outstanding shares of Apple stock didn’t bother to vote. Clearly, left-leaning voters who favor Cook’s use of Apple’s power for social justice and Black Lives Matter causes are using their franchise to the fullest while conservatives skip voting.

This voting pattern is not unique to Apple. It’s prevalent throughout corporate America. No corporate board member has done more to censor conservatives than Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, yet she received 99 percent of the votes at the company’s 2020 annual meeting.

The left also dominates shareholder proposals filings at 95 percent of the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) proposals. The next time you view a company prospectus or annual report, look for ESG. Hundreds of ESG proposals filed annually influence corporate behavior.

Organizations that advise investors on how to vote for these ballot initiatives have become fully woke. The Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute (cfainstitute.org) endorses ESG factors. These factors are not common in financial reporting, yet more companies include these factors in sustainability reports. The reports are driven by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD). They work to facilitate incorporating these factors into the investing process. As a result, liberal ESG proposals now receive record support. Morningstar reported that 2019 “ESG-related shareholder resolutions were supported, on average, by 29 percent of investor shares voted. The previous record high was 25 percent in 2018.”

But help is on the way. The 2021 Investor Value Voter Guide (IVVG) was released April 26, 2021 by the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP). (https://nationalcenter.org/ncppr/2021/04/26/voting-guide-released-for-conservative-investors/) Also see: (https://nationalcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021_Investor_Value_Voter_Guide.pdf) The guide urges conservative investors to make their votes count by influencing corporate America through proxy votes. Justin Danhof, Esq. says, “As the director of the conservative movement’s most effective shareholder activism organization, I can attest that any proposal receiving more than 10 percent of the vote is going to get the attention of the [corporate] suite and board…Our Investor Value Voter Guide aims to equip conservatives with the power to reclaim their voices within corporate America and to neuter the left’s undue influence.”

Oh, by the way, note corporate hypocrisy. Major companies desiring to be woke object to states passing corrective updates to their voting laws. Yet, before voting at annual shareholders’ meetings, shareholders must identify themselves to the corporation as legitimate owners of the shares of stock! I’ll wager no illegal aliens or dead people are voting at their meetings!

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).