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Corporations can vote in some Delaware elections, judge says

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/esg/corporations-have-the-right-to-vote-in-delaware-town-judge-says
62•marcher•55m ago

Comments

John7878781•40m ago
This sounds completely absurd. What's stopping me from starting up a bunch of LLCs or Trusts to rig the vote?
dfxm12•37m ago
A quick Google search suggests Fenwick Island has ~400 residents. The only thing stopping you would be someone else with more resources.
tekla•36m ago
Should start a bunch of unions to rig the vote.
cwmma•35m ago
It sounds like you it's only corporations that own property in the town that get to vote. So that's probably whats preventing you.
ceejayoz•34m ago
Wonder how long it is before there's a vote to allow the sale of inch-square lots.
mindslight•19m ago
IANAA. It would seemed to be recorded, not registered, land. Which means I wouldn't think approval would be required in the first place (the lot isn't going to be buildable though, of course]
NDlurker•10m ago
Exactly. Same thing as offices register out of state businesses.
SoftTalker•18m ago
I own property in a nearby town but it's an investment; I don't live there. I'm unable to vote in their local elections. I have not heard of property ownership being a qualification to vote since the 1800s.
Hugsbox•4m ago
Which makes sense... why should anyone get a say in the local matters of a place they don't even live in?
SkyPuncher•5m ago
Owning property through a corporation is trivial. 3 of my nearby neighbors are owned via an LLC (rentals).

* Start an LLC/C-corp for a trivial amount of money.

* Purchase land, but instead of paying with it via a personal check, you need a touch of foresight so you can "capitalize" the corporation you just started. Write the check from the corporation, instead of your personal checkbook.

nh23423fefe•29m ago
Read the opinion.

> I appreciate that Plaintiff may disagree with Delaware’s policy of authorizing certain municipalities to allow voting on behalf of entity property owners. Visions of faceless large corporations or even HAL, 55 controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction. However, Plaintiff has not demonstrated that this policy violates the principle of one person/entity/one vote.

pessimizer•11m ago
The answer to the question asked is not here. Accusing somebody of seeing "visions" is not an answer, it is an evasion.
josefritzishere•7m ago
It fundamentally violates one person/entity/one vote. Corporations are not sentient. If you let them vote, a person gets to vote twice. There's no way around that conflict. I feel like this has to collapse on appeal or the nation is doomed.
yieldcrv•38m ago
> Visions of faceless large corporations or even HAL controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction

The City of London and Hong Kong have half of the voting power held by corporations and City of London is older than any US state, and colony. And so are some of the guilds

Universal suffrage at all, and exclusive to natural persons, is more science fiction than corporations voting

tialaramex•10m ago
One of the interesting patterns for suffrage has been that it doesn't matter.

Before Great Reform the vast majority of British people can't vote, after it all the moderately wealthy men can now vote. So did that result in massive political change, reflecting the newly enfranchised people's preferences? Nope. Subsequent tinkering expanded suffrage slightly but again, the results were the same. Then last century they did several things in quick succession (often portrayed as "universal suffrage" but as we'll see that's just what people always call any expansion, the "universe" of one's imagination grows). First they gave all men (including poor men), and older women suffrage. This made no appreciable difference except that, having now entertained the idea that women should vote (it wasn't technically illegal before Great Reform it just didn't happen enough to matter) the women realised hey, maybe women should be politicians and that did cause some modest changes. Then they equalised voting age for men and women, so now a 21 year old can vote regardless of gender.

Later in that century the UK gave almost† all 18 year olds the vote too, and again the worry was maybe a 19 year old will vote differently? Nope. More or less the same results.

So, maybe giving corporations the vote changes nothing, but I'm less hopeful than I was for giving Sarah, an 18 year living with her parents on benefits the vote knowing that for some insane reason she's not actually much more likely to vote against a "Fuck Sarah, take her money away" policy than everybody else is because apparently all people are morons so giving more of them suffrage changed nothing. I think corporations are psychopaths not morons...

† Although most crooks in the UK aren't magically stopped from voting, they can't vote in prison and in practice it's very hard to vote from prison even if it would be legal for you because you're held there prior to a trial or whatever. So that's not ideal. It is controversial whether specific electoral interference crimes should result in withdrawal of suffrage, as is the practice today or whether that's just petty and ultimately futile.

[[ I still support universal suffrage, but because now it's everybody's fault. You're not going to get a good government, but now the terrible government is your fault too. ]]

bitwize•38m ago
Republicans have just lost the right to whinge about illegal immigrants being able to vote. Even if it were true... let them vote. Their say in what happens to them in this country matters more than that of any corporation.
rayiner•31m ago
What do “Republicans” have to do with this? This is Delaware. Everyone in this story is a Democrat.
ceejayoz•22m ago
41% of Delaware voters picked Trump in 2024.

Per https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2024_United_States_P..., Fenwick Island itself went red (the absolute bottom-right-most spot).

rayiner•13m ago
Someone does something you don’t like in a state that overwhelmingly voted for Harris, where Democrats control every level of government and appoint all the judges. But somehow it’s still Trump’s fault lol.
ceejayoz•4m ago
You asserted "Everyone in this story is a Democrat".

That seems unlikely, given the town is a red precinct.

mindslight•17m ago
It's a low effort partisan comment, but "Republicans" generally represent the naked corporate agenda (bad cop) while the "Democrats" at least try to hide it and throw the People some concessions (good cop).
rayiner•6m ago
[delayed]
condis•36m ago
So can I just create a boatload of shell companies to vote for me?
8cvor6j844qw_d6•25m ago
Same question. So someone rich can spin up shell companies to steer elections hmm...

Or several companies with the same interest in mind voted for something good for the companies, bad for individuals.

jauntywundrkind•36m ago
You can register a corporation in Delaware for $109.

The Town of Fenwick Island mentioned here has a population of 400.

It's high noon for this matter, & about time to start repealing corporate rights. The undoing of this travesty should be a federal project. But hopefully Delaware can course correct themselves, and reverse the mega-threat to humanity they have been unleashing. At least states like Hawaii are heading in the opposite direction already, saying corporations are not people and denying them human speech rights. Potentially immortal easy to spawn companies should indeed not be granted full human rights. https://inequality.org/article/hawaii-targets-citizens-unite...

mindslight•29m ago
Doing this at scale might be even cheaper than that. A Delaware Series LLC is $300/year, which then lets you make an unlimited number of independent legal entities. You don't even have to file paperwork with the state to create these new entities, just your own internal bookkeeping. Although presumably you'd have to file paperwork to transfer them a tiny sliver of real estate ($$), register to vote (free), and to actually vote (free).
chuckadams•18m ago
I have to imagine that's an OpenClaw workflow by now.
NDlurker•5m ago
So I buy one parcel of land and then split off ownership to each of the 400 entities I created? Crazy
chuckadams•15m ago
The state of Hawaii was the most recent to be expropriated from its natives at the behest of corporate landlords, so they're probably a bit raw about it.
cwmma•33m ago
It's specifically about corporations that own property in a specific town voting. So no you can't just spin up a bunch of LLCs to rig an election, this is about the rights of absentee landlords.
ceejayoz•30m ago
> So no you can't just spin up a bunch of LLCs to rig an election…

Sure you can. You just have to sell them some land as part of it.

righthand•29m ago
And when my plot of land is co-owned by my 100 shell corporations?
nh23423fefe•28m ago
Why are you pretending this argument wasn't addressed in the opinion?
ceejayoz•26m ago
But it wasn't, really.

> Where a voter is entitled to vote by virtue of being both a resident and as an owner of real property, that voter shall be entitled to only one vote; where a voter is entitled to vote by ownership of two or more parcels of real property, that voter shall be entitled to only one vote.

> Any legal entity other than a natural person entitled to vote, must cast its vote by a duly executed and notarized power of attorney from the legal entity granting the authority to cast its vote to its designated attorney-in-fact… The person casting the ballot for such entity shall be age 18 on or before the date of the election and a citizen of the United States.

That just means I have to give 100 people POAs.

forgetfulness•10m ago
Also what constitutes ownership here? Couldn't some Enterprising Individuals open 100 shell companies, pool together resources and form the Legalize Asbestos Consortium, the Consortium buys a plot of land and then each stakeholder of the Consortium counts as an owner of the plot of land?
rithdmc•16m ago
I didn't see anything about this in the opinion.

It does say that multiple owners of a single property can not have their voting rights apportioned by value, as this would be dilution or would not fit one person/one vote.

DarkNova6•32m ago
Corporate representation in UNO when?
ryeights•30m ago
This reads like satire from a Slate commentary piece on Citizens United. I suppose we’re just waiting around until the majority of corporations in the US are formed and operated by AI agents. And then…
black6•30m ago
If I own property in multiple municipalities/states, then I should be able to vote in all of them on local issues.
postflopclarity•27m ago
that's a different legal question than the one here.
toast0•10m ago
This case is specifically about allowing voting for non-resident property owners when the ownership is held by a corporation rather than a natural person.
yesfitz•21m ago
Why?
samwiseg•19m ago
Absolutely not. If you don’t live there, then your vote shouldn’t matter as much as someone who does live there.
bluefirebrand•28m ago
I hope we can agree that allowing corporations to vote in any kind of political process is taking corporate personhood too far
rayiner•20m ago
In this case, I don’t agree. The municipal charter here allows non-residents who own property on the island to vote. Why should it be different whether I own the property in my own name, or I own a corporation that in turn owns the property?

To the extent there’s a problem here, the problem is the municipal charter essentially allows “property to vote.” That seems to be the real problem.

soco•6m ago
Then it wouldn't be a big deal to change that charter, right? Right? Right? Of course, if the actual locals are bothered by it - not us on the internet with exactly zero dogs in that fight.
klaff•12m ago
I absolutely agree. They shouldn't be able to vote and they shouldn't have free speech rights. Corporations are a legal structure - a way to allow risk sharing to encourage investment that would otherwise maybe not happen if one had to risk everything in order to invest. But when we choose to allow that, and it is a choice, we should not give those entities the rights of people. It is simply absurd.
rayiner•26m ago
I don’t understand why people have so much trouble understanding that a “corporation” is just a proxy for the humans that own and control the corporation. In this case, non-residents who own a house on the island can vote according to the charter. The charter just says that this doesn’t change because you move ownership of the house into a legal entity that some human then owns and controls.

The actual grievance seems to be unrelated to the corporation itself. People just associate “corporations” with rich people, and they won’t want rich people to vote.

klaff•17m ago
Is this rich person also voting in the place where they actually live? I'm not against a rich person voting, I just don't want them to get more than one vote. I haven't read the opinion to see if that's addressed.
abejfehr•16m ago
> ... they won’t want rich people to vote.

I think it might be more than that

wat10000•11m ago
If the corporation is just a proxy for the owners then why is this in court? Why aren't the humans just voting directly? It's well established that it's OK for humans to vote.
rayiner•8m ago
[delayed]
tiahura•8m ago
because the city of Fenwick Island decided it wanted to set things up a different way, the ACLU challenged, and the judge said the city can it up how they want to.
wat10000•4m ago
The question is not what the law says (the headline is sufficient to understand that), but why people are doing this at all. If corporations are just proxies for their owners, then owners who want a vote could just own the property in their own name rather than their corporation's and problem solved. There is some reason they don't do this. I want rayiner to spell it out for me, because that "a corporation is just a proxy" line is 100% horseshit.
tiahura•11m ago
When I hear people grouse about the concept corporate rights, I always ask them why they hate New York Times _Co._ v. Sullivan.
ceejayoz•6m ago
And they scratch your head and say "but... that ruling applies to regular people, like NYT staff and you and me."

It simply sets a high standard for proving defamation claims by public figures.

rayiner•5m ago
[delayed]
trinsic2•10m ago
The problem is corporations mostly don't have the same interests in communities as people and they are motivated by other concerns that can run counter to the good of society. So yea.
craftkiller•9m ago
> they won’t want rich people to vote.

I don't think anyone would object to a rich person casting a single vote and maybe putting a bumper sticker on their car or a sign in their yard. The issue people take with the rich and politics is the outsized influence they wield in elections. The whole "one person one vote" thing falls apart when the rich can throw millions at advertisements and millions at the "charities" run by the politicians they bought.

esikich•9m ago
Does a corporation need healthcare? Can a corporation be jailed? Does a corporation have a finite life in which they can pursue happiness? Does a corporation have offspring it's trying to raise? Does a corporation have hopes and dreams? Does a corporation wish to visit a park or visit with their neighbors? Are you for real?
condis•8m ago
Nobody expect a slave race pajeet to understand anything. It’s not your job.
rc-research•22m ago
> Visions of faceless large corporations or even HAL controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction.

Company towns are well-recorded history, not science fiction. Lost Hills California (home of Wonderful Pistachios) exists in the real, present, non-fictional world.

recursivecaveat•20m ago
> Karsnitz dismissed the lawsuit from Delaware’s Superior Court, citing “the principle of one person/entity/one vote.”

What? The principle is "one person, one vote". I'd like to cite the principle of "one person, one vote, unless they're named recursivecaveat in which case 1 trillion votes" to assert my rights in the Fenwick island elections please.

josefritzishere•16m ago
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".
tiahura•15m ago
all corporations ultimately resolve down to individuals. either the shareholders or the board.
davidw•14m ago
Having corporations be distinct entities whose investors have limited liability is a pretty fundamental to a lot of things. But voting? That is way too far.
swampthing•4m ago
To save everyone some trouble, "some Delaware elections" refers to elections in a town that amended its charter to explicitly allow legal entities to vote.

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