Yahoo Vote-Counter: "We Screwed Up"

Sam Gustin shakes his head at the wonder of it all. Is Yahoo such a mess that it can't even get the proxy vote tally from its shareholder meeting correct?

To be fair, Yahoo is placing all of the blame on the vote counter, and says it's had nothing to do with compiling the final tally.

Still, the Yahoo vote-snafu seems kind of an apt metaphor for the company's flailing performance -- not just financially, as it's gotten schooled by chief competitor Google in recent years -- but also in its awful handling of Microsoft's bid, culminating in its decision to accept an offer (at $33 per share) that it had previously rejected, only to find the offer withdrawn.

As in the Microsoft saga, Yahoo is blaming the other guy -- in this case, Broadridge Financial Solutions, the company charged with counting the Yahoo proxy votes for Capital Research Global Investors, which says it screwed up when tabulating the vote tally (and it's not the first time).

"Upon review, it was determined that there was a truncation error in the final printout sent to the tabulator," Broadridge said in a statement. "This resulted in the under-reporting of shares withheld for certain directors. This error did not change the outcome of the election of directors, and was determined to be an isolated incident."

The company said some of the results it submitted had only eight digits, when they should have had nine.

We're standing by for the revised, updated, amended results.