2008 ELECTION RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
The official results of the 2008 election were announced November 21 on the WorldMark the Club website. As expected, the two incumbents were re-elected. (Remember that no challenger has EVER defeated an incumbent in a WorldMark election.*)
But the results are far from disappointing. First, we succeeded in defeating Proposition 1, which would have given the Board of Directors absolute authority over whether, when, and how to expand the Board, as well as authority to appoint the new members. Second, though the "total vote" showed me a distant third, there is more to the numbers than what WorldMark presents.
This is how the official results on the Director vote were published: (Click here to see the actual BNYMellon tabulation report)
| Candidate | Owner Vote | BoD Proxies | Owner Proxies | Total Vote |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Henley | 51,404 | 65,080 | 0 | 116,484 |
| Herrick | 46,113 | 65,062 | 0 | 111,175 |
| Hunter | 9,401 | 0 | 0 | 9,401 |
| Charles | 11,713 | 0 | 0 | 11,713 |
| Lee | 4,190 | 0 | 0 | 4,190 |
| Larson | 7,762 | 0 | 0 | 7,762 |
| Tribe | 33,127 | 0 | 13,498 | 46,625 |
| Gring | 2,915 | 0 | 0 | 2,915 |
However, just like in 2007, what they call "Owner Vote" includes the Developer vote. The developer had 28,020 votes this year -- and they could vote those once for each available seat. It is logical to assume that the Developer voted the same way the Board did. That is clearly what happened with the Proposition 1 vote, which was reported both with and without the Developer. So that means that the "Owner Vote" numbers reported for each incumbent included 28,020 Developer votes.
If we could remove the Developer Vote and the Developer-Controlled Board Proxies from the total, the results would look like this:
| Candidate | Non-Dev Owner Vote | Owner Proxies | Total Owner Vote |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tribe | 33,127 | 13,498 | 46,625 |
| Henley | 23,384 | 0 | 23,384 |
| Herrick | 18,093 | 0 | 18,903 |
| Charles | 11,713 | 0 | 11,713 |
| Hunter | 9,401 | 0 | 9,401 |
| Larson | 7,762 | 0 | 7,762 |
| Lee | 4,190 | 0 | 4,190 |
| Gring | 2,915 | 0 | 2,915 |
I received more owner votes than the two incumbents COMBINED! (I consider my "owner proxies" to be owner votes because these proxies were assigned to independent owners with the explicit understanding that they would be voted to support independent owner representation on the Board of Directors. The Board's proxy solicitations said only "help us to achieve a quorum", with no disclosure that those "quorum-building" proxies would be used to maintain the Developer's control of the Board of Directors.) Yes, the incumbents won the election -- but I clearly won the VOTE.
The results of this
election, and the power that the Board's 65,000 proxies gave them,
re-emphasize the need for an INDEPENDENT proxy drive. For more on Proxies, click here.
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