> Voting rights are powerful. That's the point of the long-term exchange.

> In existing exchanges, going long and short in equal amounts on the same stock simply cancel each other out.

Not really, for voting purposes. You can buy the stock, borrow the stock, sell the borrowed shares and end up with "free" voting rights and no economic exposure to the stock. I say "free" because you may have to pay someone a few percent to lend you the stock.

You might say centralised clearing prevents this from happening - that my account will always just show a position of zero shares so I have no votes. But even in that case, I can open two accounts, one long and one short, with the same effect.

We'll see more strategies like voting against the company's interest in order to benefit one's other portfolio holdings. You just need enough to tip a split vote (which at least means a large number probably don't believe it is against the company's interest; but if the voter has inside info there wouldn't be much stopping them as it isn't an inside trade..).

Sure, but the price of the stock probably reflects that voting power.

For example, right now there are different share types that you can buy from the same company that have different voting rights.