Some shareholders will join the legal action on Monday, the company said in a statement Sunday.
Vivendi did not name suspects, but said the vote manipulation "could have been carried out by a small team armed with a transmitter-receiver and detailed knowledge of the procedures and technical protocols of electronic voting."
French law allows criminal complaints to be filed without naming suspects. The process paves the way for an official investigation.
Routine checks of the voting at Wednesday's meeting showed an unusually high abstention rate. Vivendi said it found no problems with voting equipment and learned from shareholders that the abstention rate didn't match up with votes that had been cast.
"This incident is extremely serious because it could cast suspicion on the entire Paris market and all shareholders' meetings carried out by electronic vote today, and in the future, over the Internet," Vivendi said.
Vivendi said votes from large shareholders were counted systematically as abstentions.
The company said it checked with shareholders such as glass and building-materials group Saint Gobain and banks Societe Generale, Credit Agricole and BNP Paribas. Votes registered by those companies were not in line with those that had been cast, Vivendi said.
Vivendi said its board would gather Monday to set a new meeting for early June so shareholders can cast new votes on 19 resolutions -- including a much-contested plan to award stock options to top executives. The proposal was rejected at the shareholders' meeting.
The other rejected resolution asked shareholders to relinquish preferential rights on future sales of real estate.
The company announced Friday that it found irregularities in Internet voting by shareholders two days earlier and said crackers were probably responsible.
The announcement followed a tumultuous shareholder meeting where protesters demanded the resignation of Vivendi chief executive Jean-Marie Messier. A few people booed and whistled as he addressed shareholders.
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