Corporations can vote in some Delaware elections, judge says

John7878781

This sounds completely absurd. What's stopping me from starting up a bunch of LLCs or Trusts to rig the vote?

yieldcrv

> 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

jauntywundrkind

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...

cwmma

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.

DarkNova6

Corporate representation in UNO when?

ryeights

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

If I own property in multiple municipalities/states, then I should be able to vote in all of them on local issues.

bluefirebrand

I hope we can agree that allowing corporations to vote in any kind of political process is taking corporate personhood too far

rayiner

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.

rc-research

> 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

> 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

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".

tiahura

all corporations ultimately resolve down to individuals. either the shareholders or the board.

davidw

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

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.

MattCruikshank

I was daydreaming about, picture if a corporation buys an entire state. Say, Wyoming or West Virginia. Gemini guesses $180 billion to $250 billion. With that investment, they'd get to control who lives in the state. So, then the corporation gets to control who the Governor is. And the two Senators, and the seat in the Congress. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a single Senator have just a tremendous amount of power to block basically any legislation? With pocket vetoes, or silent filibusters? Granted, actually buying a Senator is probably cheaper by a few orders of magnitude.

Hizonner

I think I'm just gonna repost this recent link here... https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/acceler...

booleanbetrayal

I don't understand how this thread went from something like #10 on the main page down to #186 in a matter of an hour, despite being more active than most of the threads it is competing with. Can someone more familiar with HN rankings explain this one to me?

rho138

ofc it’s Fenwick Island - it’s a mix of brainrot tourons and “tread on me harder daddy” closeted republicans. Source: local

jmward01

The problem with companies being treated like people is that they are only afforded the -good- aspects and not the -bad- ones. This is an out for the rich to become 'more equal' by owning companies and having expanded rights that the average person doesn't. If this is really just a delegation of rights then fine. One vote, one person that is actually eligible, and not by right of them owning that company, for that vote explicitly delegates that one instance of that right. Same with campaign finance and all the other 'good parts' companies are getting without the bad parts. If these companies really are people then why aren't they actually being thrown in jail when they commit crimes? Why aren't they on death row when they kill people for money? Rights without responsibility and repercussions is tyranny since -some actual person- is now forced to feel that responsibility and the repercussions that this company pushed off.