The Corporate Monitoring Newsletter

Issue #21 - May 2005

Written by Mark Latham

IN THIS ISSUE:

1. University Student Council "Election Info Awards"

2. Coming Soon: MyProxyAdvisor.com

3. Proxy Advisor Proposal at Metro One June 16 AGM

4. British Columbia Voted 57% For Electoral Reform
_________________________________________________________________

1. UNIVERSITY STUDENT COUNCIL "ELECTION INFO AWARDS"

I recently designed an easier way to get a trial implementation of
turbo democracy (voter-directed funding of voter information). I
am now offering to sponsor "Election Info Awards" for university
student council elections. This design is outlined in section 4(a)
of a working paper with the revised title "Turbo Democracy: A New
Business Model for Public-Interest Journalism" - see
www.corpmon.com/publications.htm .

A successful demonstration of how voters can empower themselves by
paying collective funds for better information would be more
convincing than all my arguments published to date. Once people
see how it works, voter demand can spread this reform to the
governance of corporations and large democracies.
_________________________________________________________________

2. COMING SOON: MYPROXYADVISOR.COM

A new website will soon offer individuals email notification of
voting decisions by their preferred institutions on stocks they
both own. MyProxyAdvisor is a free service inspired by my writings
(e.g. "Vote Your Stock" at www.corpmon.com/publications.htm) and
directed by Andrew Eggers, a PhD student in Harvard's Department of
Government. It would enable individual investors to conveniently
piggyback their stock voting decisions on those of institutional
investors with trusted reputations.

A Beta version of the service is expected to be available this
summer. If you're interested in being a Beta tester, please send
an email to info [at] myproxyadvisor.com .
_________________________________________________________________

3. PROXY ADVISOR PROPOSAL AT METRO ONE JUNE 16 AGM

Shareowners of Metro One Telecommunications [ticker: INFO] are now
voting on my Proxy Advisor proposal, which would let shareowners
vote to choose a proxy advisory firm paid with company funds. The
SEC did not concur with management's arguments for excluding the
proposal from the company proxy. I will attend the Metro One
annual general meeting near Portland Oregon on June 16 to present
this resolution. The same proposal was supported by over 20% of
shareowners voting on Oregon Steel's proxy in April 2004. Further
info is linked from www.corpmon.com .
_________________________________________________________________

4. BRITISH COLUMBIA VOTED 57% FOR ELECTORAL REFORM

On May 17, citizens of my home province, British Columbia, voted
57% in favour of replacing the current "First Past The Post" (FPTP)
electoral system with a Single Transferable Vote system designed
for B.C. (BC-STV). However, the official threshold required for the
government to implement BC-STV was 60%, so there is no plan to go
ahead and change the system.

Nonetheless, most observers agree that this majority vote for
change was too strong to ignore, and various ideas for responding
to it are being discussed. BC-STV would give more proportional
representation to multiple political parties than FPTP, as well as
shifting some power from parties to voters. More info at these
websites:

www.bc-stv.ca
www.stvforbc.com
www.citizensassembly.bc.ca
www.knowstv.ca

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