“Giving shareholders the right to nominate directors is the most basic and fundamental right in corporate America,” said Geoffrey Raynor, senior managing partner and founder of Q Investments. “We cannot find one corporation in the Fortune 500 that does not allow shareholders this right.”

CEDAR FAIR’S board was unreceptive to the idea that the company’s owners be allowed to nominate directors to represent them. So, last March, Q Investments put forward another proposal that would require Cedar Fair to allow unit holders to nominate directors. Unit holders voted on the proposal at a special meeting on June 2.

It passed resoundingly. Investors holding 67 percent of the Cedar Fair units outstanding voted in favor of letting shareholders nominate directors to the board, according to company filings. An even greater majority of the units that cast a vote on the proposal — 96 percent — supported it.

The shareholders had spoken. Did the company hear?

Not exactly. While acknowledging that a vast majority of its owners wanted to be able to nominate directors, Cedar Fair said that investors’ wishes could not be granted. The partnership’s regulations, Cedar Fair said, require that changes in the company’s by-laws involving matters such as board elections, must receive the support of 80 percent of the units outstanding. So, even though more than two-thirds of the units outstanding had been cast in support of the change in the by-laws, the proposal failed.

Q Investments said that it had studied voting patterns among unit holders at the company and that roughly 30 percent of Cedar Fair units typically were not even cast at shareholder meetings. As a result, Q Investments said, the 80 percent threshold was virtually unachievable.

“This most recent vote was as close to unanimous as possible,” Mr. Raynor said. “Seventy percent of all unit holders voted, and 95 percent of those voting supported giving unit holders the right to nominate directors. Yet this board has refused to give unit holders this right.”

Stacy Frole, director of investor relations at Cedar Fair, said that the board could not abide by its owners’ wishes and change the 80 percent threshold. “These are the regulations of the general partner; we can’t circumvent those,” she said. “Within the general partner regulations, it would require an 80 percent vote to change the 80 percent voting requirement.”