Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig Karsnitz said the beach town of Fenwick Island was not diluting human votes by allowing companies and other legal entities that own property to cast votes in municipal elections.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware sued the town, arguing it violated the elections clause of the state constitution. The group sought a court order blocking Fenwick Island from counting votes by “non-human artificial entities” in future elections.
The group said entities make up about 12% of registered voters in the town.
A lawyer for the organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The town’s mayor, Natalie Magdeburger, did not immediately respond to a request for comment but told Reuters in March that the city believes “a property owner who pays taxes and is subject to our ordinances should have a say in who represents them on our Town Council.”
However, plaintiff has not demonstrated that this policy violates the principle of one person/entity/one vote.
Since when did we ever have a principle of “one entity/one vote”?
This is a gigantic loophole, simply live in that town and register a corporation there and you can vote twice.
Corporations are people, my friend. Just people with only rights, no obligations.
Vote twice? No no no, you register 1000 companies and vote 1001 times.
Seems like the corporation would also need to own property.
How much property? You could just register 1 sqcm of your lawn to each corp…
There’s those groups “selling” 1 sq foot of Scotland. Maybe give it to your LLC and now you’ve got one vote.
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If a corporation is a person then they can be executed for causing death and they can be put in jail and not be allowed to operate when they break the law right?
“a property owner who pays taxes and is subject to our ordinances should have a say in who represents them on our Town Council.” —
Uh… Yes if they’re a citizen of your town they already have that. It’s called democracy.
My guess is these “property owners” don’t even live in the fucking town or area or possibly even the state and maybe not even in the country.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig Karsnitz ruled on Tuesday that the town’s charter did not violate the state’s constitution’s elections clause, which says, “All elections shall be free and equal.” The judge said the clause has been understood by courts to mean free of fraud and noted there were no allegations of racial or other kinds of discrimination. — thick as two planks
Given that we are talking about Delaware, how big are the chances that a good amount of those companies have the size of about one letter box?
how big are the chancesthat a good amount of those companies have the size of about one letter box? — exactly
This is what really blows my mind. In theory, buy a parcel of land, divide it up in to letter box sized addresses. Bam, you have thousands of “votes”.
Make it equal representation! One dollar, one vote. :/
I wonder if they could attack them from the other direction. Some individiual is making this vote as a “company” is just a piece of paper with no autonomy or ability to make a choice. I would imagine the person casting this vote on behalf of the company is also voting in whatever place they happen to live and AFAIK that’s illegal.
I would hope. But you run into the problem of circumstantial evidence. Unless you have direct evidence it’s very hard to prove conclusively.
And to be honest, the current state of the United States I doubt they would get any more than a slap on the wrist. Hell they probably get a presidential award lol
So for ~$500, I, a non resident, could create an LLC and have it vote for me?
Or multiple…
It doesn’t even cost that much.
If you live in a red state, it’s time to start opening businesses.
Lots of businesses are incorporated in Delaware, because they don’t require public ownership disclosures. If you want to create a shell corporation or hide your identity behind an LLC, Delaware is where you register. On paper, the state has ~2x more corporations than residents. That’s not even an exaggeration…
The official population estimate for the state is 1,059,952. In contrast, the state has over 2,100,000 registered corporations.
And now all of those faceless shell corporations can vote.
Delaware your fucked up.
Fine. Register 1,000,000 companies and find some worthless postage-stamp lot for them to jointly own. Vote yourself in as mayor and then expel/imprison/destroy all the non-human “voters[sic]”.
So what’s to stop someone from just renting a shit ton of mailboxes in a small Delaware town and then creating millions of companies to further dilute human votes?
Wouldn’t even need to rent a shit ton of mailboxes. You can use a single mailing address for multiple businesses. IIRC there’s an unassuming office building somewhere in the middle of nowhere that is the official mailing address for thousands of shell corporations. That’s basically the company owner’s entire schtick; you pay them, and they allow you to list their address for mail. And then they’ll forward it around as needed. But that means anybody trying to look up a shell corporation to find info about the owners will hit a dead end at that tiny office building.
Delaware is already really popular for registering LLCs because it’s one of two US states that do not require public registration, meaning if your LLC is registered in Delaware its details are not public record. (The other state that allows private LLC registration, and I could be remembering it wrong so don’t count on this, is New Mexico.)
That guy is a state superior court judge! Can you imagine a high official fucking something up so badly? The individuals in these corporations have their say, unless they don’t live there. If they don’t live there, the local government does NOT represent them. They should therefore have no say in it. This should not have been left for a single person to decide. It should have been put to public vote if it should have been considered at all. Personally, I don’t think that it should.
That is like, five kinds of fucked up.
Individuals have to claim primary residence somewhere and that is where they are eligible to vote. Corporations are composed of individuals who can vote in their home towns/states. Nowhere is it written that corporations have to be democratic in any way, so a corporation very well may (probably will!) be just be a second vote for the highest ranking individual within. It’s obvious bullshit that should not be tolerated. Are we fucking blind?
No but that judge probably got a nice bonus for the ruling.
Edit: this is a logical consequence of Citizens United. Which makes it no less fucked in the head.
No but that judge probably got a nice bonus for the ruling.
Sir, I am offended! There is no way this official received a bonus or bribe of any kind before the ruling. That would be unethical!
This officer received his payment after the ruling was made. That makes it a gratuity, which is acceptable, according to no less an authority than Brett Kavanaugh.
The federal government provides minimums for voting, but they’ve never tried providing a maximum requirement until Trump. A state, in theory, could allow various kinds of non-humans from voting.
It is part of the reason why national elections are based on state population, not number of voters.
Mussolini would be proud
Oh hell no
Burn corpo shit human agents too
