Can they go to jail?
this post was submitted on 27 May 2026
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This is why ~~Citizens United~~ Corporations United has to be repealed. Don't just get mad at a judge for ruling according to the law, which is his job. There are shades of legality judges can rule on, like the meaning of "reasonable", but if federal law says a corporation is a person, it's legally a person. The solution is to repeal that law.
edit: typo
We are so fucked
Yep. But if it makes you feel any better, there was never a time when you weren’t.
Okay silver lining this explicitly applies to voting in municipal elections. This only applies to municipalities that have a law specifically allowing a vote for every property owner and citizen.
This is extremely limited in scope. Batshit insane, but not as bad as it first seemed.
Delaware is one of the most popular locations for shell corporations, because the state doesn’t require public ownership disclosure. If you want to hide behind a shell corporation or create a shady holding company, Delaware is where your new company will be based.
On paper, corporations in Delaware literally outnumber humans 2 to 1. So that means those shady faceless shell corporations could easily take control of local elections. And local elections tend to have the most direct day-to-day impact on residents’ lives. So this could very easily spiral into shell corporations making local residents’ lives hell. This is quickly approaching “local residents aren’t allowed to cook or shower during the day, because Nestle was allowed to spin up five thousand shell corporations to sway local elections and buy out local water rights” levels of dystopia.
Important to note that this is the case in this one town specifically because the town charter allows property owners to vote. As of right now this only applies to a few cities in the state. It's all in the article.
I don't know what goes into state law surrounding town charters so that may not be easy to change. Town ordinances are easier to pass, but they may not have as much power in court.
I wouldn't expect it to spiral just because this ruling is very specific, but honestly who knows these days things are weird
Don't worry. They'll extend it to more elections soon.
I mean that's unlikely as this is a very very narrow ruling. Municipal elections are some of the most deregulated type of elections. I mean one town elected a dog and in some towns children have been able to legally run.
There's a large lack of federal and state law regulating city elections, or at least when compared to state and federal elections.
Of course they could still change it, but it should take more than a court case. If courts care to follow established law, which is shaky the days I'll give you that
Wonderful .. in addition to ~~bribing~~ lobbying politicians they can now vote for them.
We are one Super PAC dark money donation away from the Bill of Rights becoming the Bill of Privileges.
It already is. And was. Not everyone gets the benefit of them, particularly if you dont have a white dick.
I'm white, but my dick is significantly darker for some reason I never understood.... just in case this is meant as synecdoche and not specific case law.
Hey hey hey leave my teeny tiny vestigial trans dick out of this
Okay, they have the right to vote, but HOW do they vote? If my mom wants to vote, I can't go vote in her place as a proxy, so a person couldn't vote in proxy for a corp. Does a company have to be 18 years old to vote? In Delaware you need a state ID or a social security number to vote. Can they get those? So many nonsensical leaps in logic have to be made to make this possible.
Corporations get special treatment, like kids with AIDS at waterparks.
They skip the line. No ID required.
In the US, people are second class citizens to corporations
Next step, trading votes like stocks on the exchange.
Can a corporation have an ID? Can a corporation have a social Security number? If a corporation dies can I burn it in a crematory to make ashes or bury it in the ground?
This is such horseshit
Well, that's one way for States to make a pittance from rich people.
Every rich person will now open 99 bs companies to vote 100 times.
Just as God intended.
Not American enough for me. When can I vote for corporations in elections? i want to be able to choose between voting for palantir or onlyfans for president
A "novel" ruling... Yeah that's one way to put it...
So then if you form a do nothing LLC, do you get an extra vote?
I wonder how much of this is blowback from Hawaii kicking their asses.
This is treason
Each employee can represent 3/5 of a vote!
We can call it the Delaware Compromise
Sweet so if I have a bunch of Delaware corporations I can vote a bunch of times.
You just have to have them own property in this particular town, so buy a small building, multifamily, convert it to condos, put each condo under a different LLC, one condo one vote. Or maybe buy a field, or an old farm. Not sure how many parcels you can split that up into. How many legally distinct property deeds you can pack in there. Might depend on zoning, or that might just be for building.
It's possible that he's actually interpreting the law correctly. It's just that the laws on this crap in Delaware are clearly batshit insane.
There's a reason Delaware is picked by so many companies to incorporate.
Just like we have Palantir, soon we will have Arasaka and Militech.