The reason why the progress of an election for directors must be kept confidential until the results are final is that leaking the results can affect the ultimate outcome.

Institutional shareholders worry about offending management by voting with an activist. They are concerned that if management learns that they have voted against the incumbent directors, they may lose 'access' to management going forward. In other words, Bob Iger is less likely to come visit and/or take a call with a shareholder if the shareholder voted with the dissident.

This is clearly a close election. Institutions don't want to risk voting against the incumbent board if it is clear that the activist will lose. They want to be on the winning side of the election.

Here, the company and/or its advisors have leaked the early results in order to tip more institutions and other shareholders to vote for the incumbent board, unfairly tipping the scale in the incumbent board's favor. In other words, an institution may think: if Peltz is going to lose, it is not worth taking the risk of offending management by voting for him.

This is unfortunately not an uncommon practice. Years ago, in our proxy contest with ADP, the company and/or its advisors did the same thing.

The @SECGov should do a thorough investigation of this proxy contest and appropriately punish whoever is responsible for this miscarriage of shareholder governance and justice.