Everyone that holds shares in an account gets to vote for each and everyone of his shares, if you own air shares, you don't even know it. So you are wrong, air shares vote unless you can prove there air shares. There is really no way to prove which shares are real and which ones are not, since the DTC and your broker would never admit that any air shares exist the company has no way to prove if it is your shares that are fake or mine. So we all get to vote. I looked into this very in depth at the time.
So pay a small divvy, then get a current shareholders list from the T/A (something the volunteer sign up failed to do). Only way to know for sure. The T/A currently see's most of us as being held by our broker, like mine are listed as being held by "Scottrade", not me. When the divvy is paid the T/A gets a list of all shareholders who received the divvy from our brokers.
DOS