Great post,
I don't know that they couldn't have the Annual Meeting before XMAS, but in that they must gather a majority of all shareholders, taking as much time as they could may be wise.
I would hope that investors realize that a positive vote is in you own best interest. If you fail to vote your proxies and they fail to get the count they need, all they can do is put off the vote further, and perhaps further delay the meeting. Additional shares authorized are required to be financially viable, even if we had approvals today they'd be needed to support the growth of the company.
I suspect it will be a few days before we'll be notified by our brokerages that we can vote the proxy, hopefully the brokerages will make it as simple as using a link available on their website. I'll admit that in the past I've not always voted, but this time I believe it's far more meaningful as a failure to do so goes down as a no vote even though no vote was cast if posters here are correct about that.
Gary