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Delaware court upholds voting by companies in small town's election (www.reuters.com)

submitted 9 hours ago by Infrapink@thebrainbin.org to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world

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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."

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[–] lmdnw@lemmy.world 5 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

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?

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

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.

[–] ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago

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.)