> What stops someone from shorting and then buying the shares (likely through an intermediary) in order to gain votes.
i don't think anything stops you, but you're going to eat the whole bid/ask spread when you're acquiring these extra shares, then again when you exit the position, plus margin maintenance costs. your plan also assumes that your broker will let you get out the entire proceeds of a unclosed short sale fast enough to get them over to another broker to buy more shares before the market can really move on you.
if your broker will even let you short whatever number of shares you want to do this with, they'll probably just lend you the cash to go long that many shares. which would be a lot easier.
i don't think anything stops you, but you're going to eat the whole bid/ask spread when you're acquiring these extra shares, then again when you exit the position, plus margin maintenance costs. your plan also assumes that your broker will let you get out the entire proceeds of a unclosed short sale fast enough to get them over to another broker to buy more shares before the market can really move on you.
if your broker will even let you short whatever number of shares you want to do this with, they'll probably just lend you the cash to go long that many shares. which would be a lot easier.