[vanrohan]

> Having voting rights kind of goes against the point of tracking an index though.

Not sure I follow how voting rights goes against the point of tracking an index? I'd say the value of the index implicitly prices in the value of the voting rights in the constituents. So if your index does not contain the voting rights, should the index price not be different?

> And for funds that use synthetic replication there is nothing to vote on in the first place.

There are all kinds of funds, of course when it's 100% synthetic then so be it. But if it holds a representitive sample of Russell 3000, then those votes count.

[samus]

The provider of the index is usually not the same entity as the fund manager. Although the fund is actually quite free in the choice of securities that it can use to track the index. It depends on the fine print of the prospectus. It could conceivably offer its shareholders voting rights regarding the presence of controversial items in its portfolio, at the risk of underperformance compared to the reference index.