In this Benzinga article, Crandall Melvin Professor of Law Shubha Ghosh discussed Elon Musk’s recent Twitter poll in advance of news of his purchase of a 9% stake in Twitter.
Ghosh says, “Proxy solicitation is where a shareholder can get other shareholders to participate in a vote so that management of a company can change its policies,” he said. “And there are rules regarding proxy solicitation. It may be a gray area, but it doesn’t strike me as a proxy solicitation. I think he’s just doing sort of an investigation as to what the policies are and not necessarily trying to get fellow shareholders to vote in a particular way or swayed them in a particular way — these tweets were done to all his followers, some of whom may be Twitter shareholders, some may not be Twitter shareholders.”