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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9015 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 2026

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I'm finally sitting down over lunch to read the decision. What would stop a company from forming 10,000 subsidiaries that jointly owned a single piece of property in common?

I believe the law provides that a single parcel of land is only entitled to a single vote, and you don't get multiple votes for owning multiple pieces of property:

These provisions shall be construed in accordance with the principle of “one person/entity, one vote.” Where a voter is entitled to vote by virtue of being both a resident and as an owner of real property, that voter shall be entitled to only one vote; where a voter is entitled to vote by ownership of two or more parcels of real property, that voter shall be entitled to only one vote.

And since the division of land into parcels is presumably controlled by the government, you wouldn't be able to run your electoral hydra scheme without the cooperation of the city/county.

the law provides that a single parcel of land is only entitled to a single vote

It does not.

you wouldn't be able to run your electoral hydra scheme without the cooperation of the city/county

So you're saying there's a chance!

The town would sue the company behind it, and the judge would likely rule that any number of companies with the same ultimate beneficiary counts as a single vote.

While it's been a while since I did my business cources in college, not all Judges are idiots.

Just most of them.

I'm finally sitting down over lunch to read the decision. What would stop a company from forming 10,000 subsidiaries that jointly owned a single piece of property in common?

I assume it works in a similar fashion to voting for home owner's associations. The household as a whole gets a vote regardless of how many owners there are.

Edit: I was curious and checked the town charter. Unless I misread the document, it does seem like if multiple corporations own a property, they get multiple votes as non-residents. Similarly it seems like if multiple people own a property (e.g. a husband and wife) then they both get to vote. Although I would think that if someone tried to abuse this system, the town charter would get amended pretty quickly.

if someone tried to abuse this system, the town charter would get amended pretty quickly.

Before, or after that abuse let them illegitimately affect the system?

My impression is the 10,000 subsidiaries would get one joint-vote. The charter has provisions for the case where a single voter is entitled to vote as both a resident and property owner (still only one vote) and where a voter owns multiple pieces of property (still only one vote). It is a little unclear to me what the legal arrangement looks like where a piece of real property has multiple owners but I suspect they would still only get one vote.

Nothing obvious. But what would stop a natural person from splitting a property between 10,000 natural people in the same manner?

This is, roughly, how George Clinton and the anti-Federalists rigged elections in early-US New York.

Square footage, I assume

That isn't how tenancy in common works. You own a 1/10,000 share of the entire 10,000-ft2 property, not a single 1-ft2 piece of that property.

It wouldn't be practicable. The more people who own a piece of property, the harder it gets to make decisions about the property, and get the owners to contribute money for upkeep. A dispute would inevitably develop, and the result would be that one of the owners files a partition action and the whole property is sold.

I'm imagining a situation where one person owns an outright majority of the property and each of the other 9999 owns only a minuscule proportion, so that the majority owner has more than enough wealth on his own to conduct maintenance unilaterally and to thwart a partition action by buying out the objector.

And what's the motivation for the majority owner to do this? He'd be giving equal access to the property to 9999 other people while being prepared to do unilateral maintenance, and if they don't contribute he's going to pay a 5-figure sum to conduct a partition action where he might not even be the high bidder. So he can...give his friends votes for the Fenwick Island town council? If I'm one of the 9999 I'm there to get access to the property and I could probably care less about some local election.

a partition action where he might not even be the high bidder

I was assuming that such a partition would work like the procedure laid out in the Uniform Partition of Heirs' Property Act, in which the judge orders an appraisal and the majority owner can buy out the objector at that price without any bidding. But obviously I am misunderstanding how partitions work.

I was assuming that such a partition would work like the procedure laid out in the Uniform Partition of Heirs' Property Act, in which the judge orders an appraisal and the majority owner can buy out the objector at that price without any bidding. But obviously I am misunderstanding how partitions work.

I would imagine that --in theory -- one could draft a detailed tenancy in common agreement to get around these sorts of issues. The minority owners would lease back their occupancy rights to the majority owner; they would agree that in lieu of partition, they could demand a reasonable payment in exchange for their ownership rights; and so on.

The bigger problem -- in my opinion -- is that the whole thing is an obvious sham. When 1000 voter registrations showed up at the town clerk's office, all based on ownership of the same property, there's a good chance that the town clerk would simply refuse to process them. And that if you brought suit, the judge would find a reason to rule against you. Even if somehow you got the voter registrations accepted, it's highly likely that the legislature would amend the voter rules in short order.

Coordinating that and managing the people involved, who would then have standing for adventures like minority shareholder lawsuits, would be much more troublesome.

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