> 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.

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. ]]

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

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

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.

I think it might be more than that

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.

Corporations are an artificial entity that literally anyone can make. Even things like property ownership are somewhat artificial. Lots can generally be split and joined through a process.

This allowance of artificial entities voting seems to open a rabbit hole of secondary issues.

... and you can probably come up with a legal way to permanently bind a corporation to vote according to specific rules.

... and larger corporations have totally inhuman internal decision making processes that frequently arrive at conclusions no human would reach.

One can imagine all kinds of abusive scenarios with shell corporations created just to get votes, but sounds like the judge thought that these imaginary scenarios were not demonstrated to be actually happening. Courts typically rule only on demonstrated harm or other actual evidence, not "what if" conjectures.

The Constitution also overrides any attempt to prevent interstate migration.

Plus, the way things are going with conservatives pushing hard for federalism, owning local matters could become more important, anyway. You might be onto something...