Traction for Vanguard's voting program 🗳️

I've been fascinated by, but skeptical of, programs by the big asset managers to give retail shareholders influence over their proxy voting. New data being released by Vanguard this week suggests its efforts at least are catching on.

The Pennsylvania-based mutual fund leader said the number of participants in its Investor Choice program reached 507,000 as of July, more than six times its level a year earlier. Participating assets rose at an even faster rate, to $151 billion from $9 billion in 2025.

That's still not much compared with Vanguard's total assets under management of $13.6 trillion as of August 31, of which about $4 billion is eligible to vote. But the accelerating participation signals a healthy appetite for the program, said John Galloway, Vanguard's global head of investor engagement. He plans for all Vanguard equity index funds, some $8 trillion, to be eligible for the program by the end of 2027.

"We're seeing investors demonstrate they want to have a voice, and they're willing to exercise that voice," Galloway said in a video interview on Tuesday.

An image from Vanguard's report showing voting-policy preferences by age group for Vanguard Brokerage clients.

I reminded him of the academic paper I cited last year describing the "rational apathy" problem that many investors don't see value in figuring out thousands of complicated proxy votes every year when their vote will have little influence on outcomes. 

Galloway pushed back, saying this year's statistics showed what he called "rational engagement." 

Efforts by Vanguard and rivals to have proxy voting be guided by the masses also remove the firms from decision making, which deflects political criticism about their votes.

Like other programs, Vanguard Investor Choice does not allow investors to vote directly at individual corporate elections. Instead retail fund shareholders can pick among options to influence their votes. These include policies that favor environmental, social and governance (ESG) reforms, that resist them, or that follow board recommendations.

Of those who signed up for the program, overall some 12% asked their votes to be cast in line with a Glass Lewis ESG program, down from 18% in 2025. An Egan-Jones policy that tends to oppose ESG proposals was selected by 22% of participants, about the same as last year. And a board-aligned policy that essentially rubber-stamps company decisions was selected by 38% of participants, up from 24% in 2024.

The policy elections varied by fund and by demographics, Vanguard said, at least among its own brokerage clients. For instance, two-thirds of clients using the program were men, and younger clients were more likely to select the ESG policy.

Anthropic Co-Founder and Chief Compute Officer Tom Brown gestures during an event in  Washington, D.C., US, September 29, 2026. REUTERS/Kylie Cooper