However, advisors such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, now control, without having any economic interest in the underlying shares, the voting rights associated with trillions of dollars worth of equity securities. I refer to this as " empty voting ", a phenomenon that creates the potential for advisors to use their empty votes to act opportunistically at the expense of the 100 million retail investors who have entrusted them with their funds. This not only puts the legitimacy of shareholder voting at risk, but also increases the potential for non-wealth maximizing activism.