After Re-Tally, “No” Votes Against Yahoo Board Higher Than First Reported

I must have done something in a past life that now requires me, as punishment, to write about the obscure politics of Yahoo’s corporate governance on an almost daily basis. Accordingly, a recount of board votes from last Friday’s Yahoo annual shareholder meeting found that the “no” votes against most of the current board membership, and most notably CEO Jerry Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock, had doubled.

The recount was requested by Capital Research Global Investors, one of Yahoo’s larger institutional shareholders, which wanted to make public what it perceived to be widespread dissatisfaction with the current board. The embarrassing recount and restatement of results has accomplished that goal.

Here are the complete vote counts, per Yahoo’s restatement:

What’s curious is that the “no” votes were understated for some but not all Yahoo directors. The errors were not Yahoo’s but those of Broadridge Financial Solutions, an independent company that tallies such votes for corporations.

I think we can safely say that while the ongoing follies around MicroHoo and Yahoo’s annual meeting are getting lots of coverage in blogs and the mainstream press, it all matters not a whit to end users.