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Investors in four more Fidelity Investments funds have voted down a proposal pushed by an outside activist group to install rules against investing in companies linked to genocide.

The latest rejections, announced Wednesday during a Fidelity shareholder meeting, follow votes against an anti-genocide proposal in more than a dozen Fidelity funds last year. The proposal reached as high as 31% of the votes in one case last year but peaked at a lower level - 24.6% of the votes for one fund - on Wednesday.

Fidelity has not supported the measure.

The proposal was brought by Boston-based Investors Against Genocide, which wants Fidelity to disengage from investing in a handful of companies - most notably PetroChina Co. (PTR) and its parent China National Petroleum Corp. - that have links with the government in Sudan, where the U.S. government has called militia attacks in the Darfur region a genocide.

None of the funds at issue on Wednesday - including Fidelity's huge Cash Reserves money-market fund - invest in the targeted companies, according to Investors Against Genocide. But the activist group, which has also taken its case to other mutual-fund companies, is seeking to set a trend through whichever funds it can reach.

A meeting was rescheduled for mid-August for some Fidelity funds that did not net enough votes in total for Wednesday's meeting. Investors in 21 Vanguard Group funds recently rejected an anti-genocide proposal, with affirmative votes below the levels seen at Fidelity, and a vote is scheduled for August at American Funds, which is a unit of Capital Group Cos. In March, TIAA-CREF announced new measures to pressure companies engaging in business with the Sudanese government.

Investors Against Genocide felt the Vanguard vote was hurt by a statement Vanguard made saying the proposal called for procedures that would duplicate existing practices, which the activist group said have not prevented problem investments.

Regarding Fidelity, Eric Cohen, co-founder and chairperson of the activist group, said "the deck is stacked" there because of several issues, including shareholders checking boxes to support all management recommendations without reading them.

The anti-genocide proposal was the third of three up for consideration on Wednesday. The others, which passed, involved the election of trustees and an amendment to reduce the required quorum for future shareholder meetings.

The activist group asks investors to voluntary submit anti-genocide proposals so that they can be wrapped in when internal proposals cause fund companies to schedule votes. It seeks a flexible policy that will allow Fidelity to also address future humanitarian disasters.

Fidelity has said and repeated Wednesday that it's sensitive to the situation in Darfur and "repulsed by genocide." But it has also urged shareholders to vote against these proposals while saying that remaining engaged with companies may be the best way to end practices they don't condone.

The company also maintains that the proposal would limit lawful investments. Fidelity has given "considerable time and thought" to the matter, Scott Goebel, secretary and chief legal officer of Fidelity funds, said during the meeting.

-By Jon Kamp, Dow Jones Newswires; 617-654-6728; jon.kamp@dowjones.com