Delaware Just Handed Corporations the Ballot Box
The town of Fenwick Island, Delaware has a population of fewer than 400 people. It covers half a square mile of beachfront real estate in Sussex County. It has a town council, local elections, and a charter — and since 2008, that charter has allowed corporations, LLCs, and trusts that own property in the town to register as voters and cast ballots in those elections.
On May 26th, a Delaware Superior Court judge said that was just fine.
Judge Craig Karsnitz dismissed an ACLU challenge to the Fenwick Island charter, ruling that corporations and other entities that own property in the town may vote in its municipal elections. The judge’s reasoning was philosophically tidy: since “trusts, partnerships, limited liability companies, and corporations are expressly recognized as ‘persons’ in the Delaware Code,” denying them a vote would violate the principle of “one person/entity/one vote.” BallotpediaWikipedia
One person/entity/one vote. Read that again slowly.
The judge acknowledged the obvious: “Visions of faceless large corporations, or even HAL, controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction.” Then he dismissed that vision anyway. Science fiction, he seemed to suggest, is not a constitutional argument. The fact that a nightmare is imaginable doesn’t make it legally cognizable. Race to the WH
Here is what is not science fiction: roughly 12% of votes cast in Fenwick Island come from corporations. That is more than the margin between winning and second-place candidates in the town’s 2024 election. Over 200 artificial entities — LLCs, trusts, corporations — are currently registered voters in a town of 400 human beings. The corporations didn’t campaign. They didn’t knock on doors. They didn’t attend town halls or read the local paper or worry about the water quality or the school board. They own property, and under this charter, that makes them citizens. 270toWin.com
Now consider what Fenwick Island is not: it is not a data center corridor. It is not an Amazon distribution zone. It is not a parcel being eyed by a $40 billion tech conglomerate looking to build server farms across rural America. It is a quiet beach town with a charming name and a terrible precedent.
Because the principle the judge just upheld — that a corporate entity owning property in a municipality earns the right to vote in that municipality’s elections — does not stay in Fenwick Island. It is a legal framework sitting in a state that has more registered business entities than people, in a country where corporate land acquisition is accelerating at a pace that would have seemed impossible a decade ago. Private equity firms, tech giants, and data center developers are buying up land across rural America right now. They are choosing sites based on power grid access, water availability, and regulatory friendliness. And in at least several Delaware municipalities, once they close on that land, they become voters.
Who do you think they’ll vote for? They’ll vote for the candidate who approves the zoning variance. They’ll vote for the council member who fast-tracks the utility connection. They’ll vote for the mayor who doesn’t ask too many questions about noise ordinances and water usage and what exactly is being built and why it runs 24 hours a day.
The ACLU announced it is appealing to the Delaware Supreme Court, which is the right move and the necessary move. But the appeal faces a legal system that has been quietly redefining “personhood” since Citizens United cracked open the door in 2010. That decision said corporations have free speech rights. This decision says they have voting rights — at least locally, at least in Delaware, at least for now. 270toWin.com
As one advocacy group put it with admirable clarity after the ruling: “Corporations aren’t people. They don’t have kids in local schools, they don’t drink the water, they can’t be jailed for crimes, and they shouldn’t get a vote.” Race to the WH
They are correct. And a Delaware judge just disagreed.
The science fiction, it turns out, is already here. It’s just confined to half a square mile for now.