Legal Study on Electronic voting system

With the development of distribution of shares, investment tendency for short term profit, and the limitation of time and place, a general meeting of shareholders which is the highest decision making organization of a company has become a mere formality. The commercial law has alleviated requirements for resolution and prerequisites for holding the general meeting of shareholders to recover its functions. Moreover, continuous efforts are being made to enhance the efficiency and convenience of the shareholder meeting through the electronic shareholder meeting. Nevertheless, electronic voting system in the general meeting of shareholders is inadequate up to the present. A previously introduced system is not actively used due to the reluctance of corporate and shareholders to use it. Thus, electronic shareholders meeting should be reinforced by seeking measures for the corporate to actively utilize the already introduced system of electronic voting system. Through this, the general meeting of shareholders should be able to perform its task as the highest decision making organization in a company. In order to achieve this goal, proxy of voting should also be carried out in the electronic system to expand the electronic shareholders meeting. Notification to the shareholder of a company should be expanded with the web disclosure. In the case of electronic disclosure, the company is needed to the root to be able to proxy to the third party. Credibility of the electronic voting management organization should be improved by introducing a registration system of the organization. Furthermore, already imposed electronic voting system should be encouraged to be utilized more actively. First, the electronic voting system and notice of a general meeting in electronic form should be linked. Through this, a company notifying convocation of the shareholder’s meeting through electronic system may not be allowed to deny the shareholder’s electronic voting rights unless a valid reason exists. In addition, shadow voting should be abolished to prevent the distortion of a general meeting of shareholders. Recognition on the general meeting of shareholders should be enhanced by reflecting matters about the electronic voting system in the standard articles of a listed company. Above these, compulsory adopting of the electronic voting system as part of a listing requirement with the listed companies that have well the spread of shares should be examined.