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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   9709 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026

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A Delaware judge has ruled that corporations have a right to vote. I have not yet had time to read the decision yet, but this seems to upend a lot of norms around voting in the US.

Corporations, partnerships, trusts, limited liability companies, and other “artificial entities” have the right to vote in Delaware elections under some circumstances, a judge said in a novel ruling Tuesday.

Judge Craig A. Karsnitz rejected an ACLU challenge to a charter permitting voting in local elections by the entities that own most of the property in the Town of Fenwick Island, one of several municipalities in the state with similar provisions. Karsnitz dismissed the lawsuit from Delaware’s Superior Court, citing “the principle of one person/entity/one vote.”

My immediate question is what... what the hell? This seems like a fairly bold decision on the part of the judge, and one that normally would not be issued by a state Superior court judge. Is there some kind of inside baseball that I'm missing here? I know that Delaware is very friendly to corporate interests, but this seems like an escalation. Is this a decision that's meant to be overturned?

Bloomberg link to opinion

Non-Bloomberg, official link (though it's still one of those infuriating "secured" PDFs that forbid copying text out of them)

The Elections Clause of the Delaware Constitution states, in its entirety: "All elections shall be free and equal." The clause is eloquent in its simplicity but lacks specific direction in application.

Under Delaware's Home Rule statute for municipalities, the State of Delaware defines "qualified voters" to mean "those persons who, under the terms of a municipal charter, shall be authorized to vote in elections within that municipal corporation".

Laws enacted by the Delaware General Assembly, such as Fenwick's Charter, are presumed to be constitutional. To overcome this presumption of constitutionality, Plaintiff must provide "clear and convincing evidence" that there is no set of circumstances under which the contested status could be constitutional. Plaintiff argues that I should subject Fenwick's Charter to "strict scrutiny" review. However, Plaintiff framed its Complaint not as an equal protection or due process claim, but rather as a declaratory judgment action. Under Delaware law, courts apply a "sliding scale" in voting rights cases. Where the state's alleged burden on voting is not severe, the state's intervention need only have served a legitimate interest. Indeed, Delaware courts have found a rational basis for expanding the voting franchise.36

36See Dupont v. Mills; see also Del. Op. Atty. Gen. 09-IB05 (finding the precedent of cases applying rational basis test to nonresident vote dilution cases to be "overwhelming").

The Delaware General Assembly has expressly authorized, by way of charter, voting on behalf of entity property owners in several jurisdictions other than Fenwick.37 [Ditto for special elections of annexation in Wilmington.] While this is not dispositive of this case, it does show that the General Assembly's treatment of Fenwick is not unique, different, or unusual.

37See, e. g., Town of Henlopen Acres, City of Rehoboth Beach, Town of Dewey Beach.

Plaintiff's ultimate argument appears to be that voters who are human beings are being deprived of their rights, or at least having the impact of those voting rights diluted, by the votes of artificial entities—or, put more bluntly, such artificial entities should not be entitled to vote. In its Answering Brief, Plaintiff devotes a significant amount of its argument to emphasizing the words person, people, humans, citizens, popular, and the like. In my view, even if those words as used in statutes and cases are acknowledged to be people-centric or person-centric, that does not support a legal argument that the Elections Clause of the Delaware Constitution supports Plaintiff's expansion of traditional vote dilution law to encompass what it calls the "debasement" of "the right of human voters" through "artificial entity voting".

Trusts, partnerships, limited liability companies, and corporations are expressly recognized as "persons" in the Delaware Code.…

I need not rule in this case as to whether entity property owners are constitutionally required to have their votes count or constitutionally precluded from doing so. Rather, I need only rule whether Plaintiff has met its burden of providing clear and convincing evidence that there is no set of circumstances under which Fenwick's Charter, as adopted and amended by the Delaware General Assembly, could be constitutional. It has not.

I appreciate that Plaintiff may disagree with Delaware's policy of authorizing certain municipalities to allow voting on behalf of entity property owners. Visions of faceless large corporations, or even HAL, controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction. However, plaintiff has not demonstrated that this policy violates the principle of one person/entity, one vote. Plaintiff points to no other persuasive independent authority than the Elections Clause of the Delaware Constitution itself. And matters of policy are appropriately left to legislative bodies, not the courts.

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