In an article in the March-April 2020 issue of Harvard Magazine research on the voting of index funds on corporate issues was summarized. The research indicates index fund managers often vote against the interests of shareholders. The "Big 3", BlackRock, State Street Global Investors and Vanguard, vote against management one-half to one-third as often as managers of actively managed funds. It is estimated these 3 fund companies hold 25% of all proxy votes in S&P 500 companies. At current trends this may increase to 40% by 2040.
These fund companies also devote little resources to corporate governance issues. For each one billion in assets BlackRock spends less than $5,000 annually. Vanguard and State Street spend approximately half that amount.
The research cited is from the Program on Corporate Governance associated with Harvard Law School.The program has a web site at https://pcg.law.harvard.edu/.
I visited the site and saw many interesting working papers. Some of the papers are free while others must be purchased. I did not see any paper over $5.00. I did get some messages that certain resources were not available when trying to look at some working papers. After some browsing the site these messages no longer appeared when trying to view the working papers. I wish I could tell exactly what I did to make these available but I am not sure why. If you are interested in corporate governance issues, this web site looks like a good source of information and discussion.

Russell Malley