Especially with large corporations, when there are hundreds or more shareholders attending, this must be a big challenge. Since each shareholder may own a different number of shares, and in some cases even different share classes with different voting power. Some proxies may represent many individual investors. So a simple show of hands won't work.
How then are the votes counted, what methods are there? How do they guarantee stock-accurate accounting?
For in-person meetings there is usually software for voting through dedicated or mobile devices preloaded with your voting entitlement as part of registration.
For proxy votes, the numbers are known in advance.
In AU at least, AGMs are attended by old people wanting a free sandwich & cup of tea. They have close to zero influence on any outcome. Generally there's only a few institutional investors that dominate ownership and it's rare that any other influence is detectable.
