"If a person sold NOT shares on Sept. 26 (Cut off for owning voteable shares was Sept 25) it's to late for the new buyer to vote..but the seller does not own them anymore..so does he still have the right to vote the shares he does not own??"
Yes. Whoever is the registered owner on the record date gets the vote. Continued ownership thereafter is not required. Same goes for dividends, or other rights.
"My hubby also wants to know..if someone had a margin account..who got to vote those shares?"
That is less clear. So few people obtain share certificates these days. Most shares are held in the street name of their broker, but internally allocated to individual shareholders. Margined shares could conceivably be in four names: broker A and his margin client, as well as Broker B and his client, if they have been loaned against a short. I don't even want to think about who owns them if the person buying the shorter's shares is himself on margin. And then there are naked short sales, which create phantom shares that might yet still be voted if a broker or brokers are sloppy with the settlement paperwork. I've heard of AGMs in which more shares were voted than are even in existence, a greater than 100% shareholder response. Which is impossible, if everyone followed proper procedures, of course.
I think that the simple answer is supposed to be that a margin-holder gets to vote his shares. And no one else should be conferred that right. But if you follow the confusion of my earlier paragraph, you can see where human beings can mess it all up, perhaps many times over.
Lar
