64. Director Election (definition)

NOTE: if you’re new to Ground-Up Governance, or are finding anything a bit strange or confusing, you might want to START HERE.

This one’s pretty easy. Directors are technically elected to their board seats. Same as any other election, there are candidates and voters. The candidate(s) who get sufficient support from voters wins the election! An election for directors is called a “director election,”  or sometimes “board election.”

Who gets to vote in a director election? Shareholders and (sometimes) members! We’ve talked about shareholders and voting a few times before (e.g. in the definitions for shareholder, widely-held, controlled company, board of directors, etc.).

The thing is, a lot of those elections are uncontested, meaning voters don’t get to choose the candidate they like best because there’s only one candidate in the first place. Plus, in a lot of those uncontested elections there is only one voter, because there’s only one shareholder. In other words, the whole thing is really just a formality. Think back to the days when you first incorporated Reallie Steilish and you were the only shareholder, the only employee, the only board member. Sure, you were *technically* elected to the board, but the election probably happened without you realizing it since no other candidates were considered and nobody else voted. It was all so simple then.

Speaking of the Wu Tang Clan, it’s great being on your own (hence all the classic solo albums by Wu members. Matt’s controversial favourite is Fishscale), but sometimes a group is undeniably greater than the sum of its parts. We’ll learn more about finding your fellow Wu Tang members in the next post.