Mirror Voting

Mirror Voting

A practice in which a brokerage votes in proportion to how a vote has gone overall. A brokerage technically owns the shares under its charge even though the actual owners (called the beneficial owners) are the brokerage's clients. The brokerage votes with these shares according to how the beneficial owners direct. However, not all beneficial owners send directions. In this case, the brokerage may practice mirror voting. For example, if all other shareholders vote 85% in favor of a measure and 15% against, the brokerage may vote 85% in favor and 15% against with its shares that otherwise would not vote. This can be particularly useful when a quorum of voters is required and would not be met otherwise.

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Mirror voting. In mirror voting, a block of new votes is cast proportionally to reflect, or echo, the way that previous voters split on a particular issue.

Using mirror voting, some brokerage firms vote proxies on behalf of non-voting beneficial owners in the same proportion as the outcome determined by shareholders who did vote their proxies.

For example, if 100 shareholders cast 60 votes for a proposal and 40 votes against, the brokerage firm would follow the 3:2 proportion in voting the proxies of the non-voting shareholders.

Brokerage firms are not required to use mirror voting, also known as shadow voting or echo voting, but may do so voluntarily.