The Manhattan Institute’s indispensible Proxy Monitor reports two more overwhelming shareholder votes against disclosure of immaterial political expenditures. At Humana, a union introduced measure got just 20.7 percent affirmative votes; a disclosure proposal fared much worse  at CIGNA, getting just 6.2% support. We’ve been summarizing the votes here. Disclosure measures are now 0-14 when voted on by shareholders, with the average “yes” vote dropping to 18.6 percent. Keep this in mind when you hear claims that the SEC should adopt mandatory disclosure of immaterial political expenditures because “shareholders have been demanding this information” be made public.

In fact, shareholders seem well aware that this is politically motivated jockeying by those who are not particularly interested in increasing shareholder value.