December 27, 2005
Companies should continue to be required to send hard copies of this material for the following reasons:
1. Reading this type of material on-line is flat out impractible. There are too many pages and you need to refer all around the documents to figure out the entire message. I work in the securities industry and it is still very hard to get a copy of this material to print out correctly and when you do it is very hard to use. Even for my personal investing I never opt-into electronic delivery of this material.
2. Many people do not have printers that can handle this volume of printing.
3. If this information is only on-line people will not know when it is available.
4. Many people still do not have internet access.
5. It is another way for management to lower the number of people voting on proxy items and maintain the status quo. It is a lot easier to remember to fill out and send in a physical proxy than to go through the trouble of getting on-line and finding it. Besides people can bring the physical material wherever they want to read it.
6. Most older people dont know how to use the internet or have such bad eyesight they cant use the internet.