Can we get the title updated? This is specifically votes in the city of Seaford. We aren't going to see state or federal elections flooded with corporate votes.
It's one town of 8,000 people trying to allow non-residents who own property through LLCs still vote.
It might be bad, but the title feels misleading to me.
The title of the bill is AN ACT TO AMEND THE CHARTER OF THE CITY OF SEAFORD RELATING TO THE CITY'S ABILITY TO AUTHORIZE ARTIFICIAL ENTITIES, LIMITED LIABILITY CORPORATIONS' PARTNERSHIPS AND TRUSTS TO VOTE IN MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS HELD IN SEAFORD. What's wrong with specificity?
This is actually routinely happening in Delaware, several other cities including Newark have enacted this law.
From another comment [1]:
> In Newark, Delaware’s third-biggest city, a similar rule allowed one property manager to vote 31 times in a local referendum in 2018, one for each of the LLCs their company owned
I've been wondering about this for a while. Since we know corporations are people my friend and have all the rights or a person what should stop them from voting. I assume that if pressed a corporation that is 18 years old should be allowed to vote, there's nothing in the constitution prohibiting it. Knowing the current group of yokels in the SC I'm sure we'd see a 6-3 vote codifying the voting rights of a corporation.
Politically? Sure, but it’s not like the idea has never existed before. You can try anything politically, independent of whether it’s a good idea, bad idea, viable or unviable.
Let’s say you live in Baltimore but also own a house in a small resort town. In Delaware, that town can decide to let you vote in Baltimore and at your vacation home.
Legally they do this by saying city elections are open to both residents and property owners (regardless of where they live).
That all seems pretty reasonable for small resort towns. But a lot of property is owned by trusts, llcs, and corporations. So this would include those property owners as well.
> I can imagine locals who live there full time having problems getting city see that a guy who lives there 3 weeks a year doesn’t care about
There is a balance of interests. That doesn’t mean anyone not somewhere all the time should get zero representation. This is part of finding that balance.
As a democratic principle, "one person one vote" only applies to a single area. It means you don't get to cast two votes in the same election.
But if you have multiple citizenship you can vote in multiple countries, for instance.
And in this case being able to vote in two municipalities at the municipal level only isn't a violation of one person, one vote.
On the other hand, if they allowed a single owner of multiple LLC's to vote once for each LLC, that certainly becomes questionable. But another HN comment here indicates the text of the bill specifically disallows that.
I really must note this ideal is already not practiced in the United States, in fact it never was. The Electoral College, the Senate, the Supreme Court ensures this.
After Citizens United I wouldn't be surprised at all if eventually corporate federal vote happened.
Thank you for steelmanning this. Most of the other comments resolve to textual downvotes. I don't necessarily blame people for this but it makes for useless discussion.
I don't think that the massive and countless # "artificial" entities that incorporate in Delaware for the purpose of legal arbitrage should have a say in how the actual people that actually live in the state go about living the lives on a daily basis. Even following Delaware history, it does in fact seem crazy to me.
Delaware resident here. It's been happening for years:
> In Newark, Delaware’s third-biggest city, a similar rule allowed one property manager to vote 31 times in a local referendum in 2018, one for each of the LLCs their company owned
Delaware's not really a tax haven. They're in the lower half of states wrt corporate tax burden last time I checked, but that's not the main benefit.
IANAL, but the main thing they I've heard they provide corporations is legal stability via their court system. Since just about every major corporation is registered in Delaware, they have precedent for just about every goofy b2b contract dispute. This allows for two very nice effects: 1) predictability about how cases will go if they hit the courts; 2) the court system tends to work very quickly when there is a dispute.
A good recent example of this was Elon Musk's dispute around purchasing twitter. Musk very obviously didn't want the deal to go through, twitter filed suit in mid july, and just three months they were a day before trial and Musk decided to buy the company as twitter was demanding. Musk ostensibly had every reason to delay as long as possible, with essentially unbounded amounts of resources to do so, and all with what sounds like a pretty goofy contract. A great example of a complex-ish b2b contract problem working it's way very quickly through the system (ie. going to trial within three months), and leaving both sides sure enough at that point of the final outcome to solve their problem without actually going to trial.
The City of London does this. For purely municipal matters, in places with a large commuter population, this can make sense—it gives voice to the people who work alongside those who live there. (Given present politics, a vote for workers might play better.)
To elaborate a bit, "City of London" is not the city of London as one would normally imagine. It is a district only about a square mile large that contains the central business and financial district. It has very little residential zoning and fewer than 10,000 residents (compared to 10 million in greater London). A recent change in law *increased the number of businesses receiving voting power to 32,000, and they nominate a number of voters that scales with their number of employees (and the total far outweighs residential votes).
* Corrected wording to clarify that law change only increases the number of businesses — businesses have had the franchise in City of London for centuries. h/t JumpCrisscross
> a big difference between giving a voice to "the people who work [there] " versus to the people who own businesses there
There is, and in it a tradeoff. The businesses will prioritise growth over liveability and working conditions. Workers working conditions; both will select for incumbency. Residents (within and without) want living conditions and, if they’re economically literate, competition in both business and labour.
It’s an interesting topic that doesn’t deserve dismissal at face value.
Do the workers get a vote, or just the corporation?
I think every person should have a say in the laws where they live, and that includes where they work. Sadly most people get one vote based on one address
In Melbourne, Australia, the local government that covers the downtown area and a few surrounding suburbs gives 2 votes to businesses and 1 vote to residents. Guess what kind of policy exists? Highly pro business, growing inequality for residents.
Freakonomics did an excellent podcast investigation on the corruption and efficiency of the Delaware legal code regarding corporations, bankruptcy, tax evasion and money laundering. According to the people they interviewed, almost all laws regarding any business practices are written not by lawmakers but by lawyers. Honestly, I couldn't figure out whether that was good or bad, but it seemed dishonest because lawyers aren't responsible to adhere to the values of the constituents of the state.
To me, that’s like complaining that software requirements are written by software people instead of user representatives; sure, you can do it the other way around, but it largely leads to poorly written requirements.
... but at least those poorly written requirements benefit the user. I would rather less than perfect rules written to benefit me, the citizen, than calculated rules written to benefit corporations that have enough money to play this shell game.
Pretty much all laws of any complexity are written by lawyers. The lawyers are engaged by the lawmakers to write the laws, so that they are written properly and actually work. Just like government software is written by software developers and government buildings are built by construction workers.
It also is just a misleading set of complaints by a bunch of activists.
> CASSARA: ... overseas doing training, talking about the importance of cracking down on money laundering. And I would invariably have a student or a colleague come up to me and say, “Yeah, Mr. John, I hear you, but we’re conducting a money laundering investigation in my country, and it goes to your country, it goes to the state of Delaware. We can’t get any information about this company. Can you help us?” There was nothing I could do, and I was just embarrassed. Just embarrassed.
If these overseas people really did trace money to Delaware then they would not have a problem getting the beneficial owners because banks are required to store it under the customer due dilligence rule. If you say "well they may have given the banks misleading information" then there's no reason to think they would have given the government the correct beneficial ownership information either (courts in some circuits have held giving fake KYC data is bank fraud [punishable by up to 30 years in prison] whereas the penalty for deliberately submitting false information under the Corporate Transparency Act will be 3 years).
> WEITZMAN: ... Why would we set up a bifurcated system like that? Only because Delaware doesn’t want to add another question to its form, “Who are you?” And then ask its registering agents to verify that you are who you say you are.
> CASSARA: The bottom line is it comes down to money, okay?
Half the reason the registry was established was so that it would be *unified*. If states (plus the various territories of the US) were storing ID information all on their own special systems it would delay the implementation of the registry by decades. So they made one federal government registry. Yes, there's a trade off, but the alternative is no registry.
This is what bothers and annoys me about Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and even The Daily Show
The audience acts like they went out of their way to get a less biased news source and edutainment
but then they skirt around everything, and all their relatable jokes are just deflections where they never gets into the nuance of whatever they just made you aware of
its like, awareness ragebait, instead of nuance. good for an overview but just the tip of the iceberg
Stuff the ballot box! Seems like it would be relatively cheap for a corporation(s) to register countless entities "including but not limited to corporations, partnerships, trusts, and limited liability companies", which already register there for legal arbitrage, and then really create their own set of rules.
It seems like the bill requires your LLC/Corporation own property in the city, not just be any registered corporation operating in the area. Seems like a way to enable vacationers/landlords vote in local elections.
This also isn’t for Delaware the state, it’s for a small town in Delaware called Seaford.
And remember, each llc has to own property in Seaford to vote in city elections. So I suppose a large group of people could spend millions of dollars to sway a city council election for a town with a few thousand residents.
You have to own property there, but maybe you can have an endless number of corporations share ownership of a property, or divide up the property into arbitrarily small parcels.
Not sure how much work I'd be willing to go through to gain control of Seaford DE, though.
Long Title: AN ACT TO AMEND THE CHARTER OF THE CITY OF SEAFORD RELATING TO THE CITY'S ABILITY TO AUTHORIZE ARTIFICIAL ENTITIES, LIMITED LIABILITY CORPORATIONS' PARTNERSHIPS AND TRUSTS TO VOTE IN MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS HELD IN SEAFORD.
Original Synopsis: This bill would allow the City of Seaford to authorize artificial entities, limited liability corporations' partnerships and trusts to vote in Municipal elections held in Seaford.
"""
Readit News
It's one town of 8,000 people trying to allow non-residents who own property through LLCs still vote.
It might be bad, but the title feels misleading to me.
What makes you so confident that things are going to change?
The title is perfectly fine. It's literally a Delaware bill. I don't know what world you're living in, but it's not the same one as me.
That is obviously not the case. Are we in the business of clickbait and fake news around these parts?
From another comment [1]:
> In Newark, Delaware’s third-biggest city, a similar rule allowed one property manager to vote 31 times in a local referendum in 2018, one for each of the LLCs their company owned
https://www.promarket.org/2022/05/23/delaware-the-state-wher...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36425994
Legally? No.
Deleted Comment
Let’s say you live in Baltimore but also own a house in a small resort town. In Delaware, that town can decide to let you vote in Baltimore and at your vacation home.
Legally they do this by saying city elections are open to both residents and property owners (regardless of where they live).
That all seems pretty reasonable for small resort towns. But a lot of property is owned by trusts, llcs, and corporations. So this would include those property owners as well.
Maybe but I can imagine locals who live there full time having problems getting city see that a guy who lives there 3 weeks a year doesn’t care about.
There is a balance of interests. That doesn’t mean anyone not somewhere all the time should get zero representation. This is part of finding that balance.
Deleted Comment
But if you have multiple citizenship you can vote in multiple countries, for instance.
And in this case being able to vote in two municipalities at the municipal level only isn't a violation of one person, one vote.
On the other hand, if they allowed a single owner of multiple LLC's to vote once for each LLC, that certainly becomes questionable. But another HN comment here indicates the text of the bill specifically disallows that.
After Citizens United I wouldn't be surprised at all if eventually corporate federal vote happened.
For steelmanning what, and what argument or rebuttal are they making?
> Most of the other comments resolve to textual downvotes.
What does this mean?
> In Newark, Delaware’s third-biggest city, a similar rule allowed one property manager to vote 31 times in a local referendum in 2018, one for each of the LLCs their company owned
https://www.promarket.org/2022/05/23/delaware-the-state-wher...
IANAL, but the main thing they I've heard they provide corporations is legal stability via their court system. Since just about every major corporation is registered in Delaware, they have precedent for just about every goofy b2b contract dispute. This allows for two very nice effects: 1) predictability about how cases will go if they hit the courts; 2) the court system tends to work very quickly when there is a dispute.
A good recent example of this was Elon Musk's dispute around purchasing twitter. Musk very obviously didn't want the deal to go through, twitter filed suit in mid july, and just three months they were a day before trial and Musk decided to buy the company as twitter was demanding. Musk ostensibly had every reason to delay as long as possible, with essentially unbounded amounts of resources to do so, and all with what sounds like a pretty goofy contract. A great example of a complex-ish b2b contract problem working it's way very quickly through the system (ie. going to trial within three months), and leaving both sides sure enough at that point of the final outcome to solve their problem without actually going to trial.
Great system for inter-corporate stability.
Deleted Comment
* Corrected wording to clarify that law change only increases the number of businesses — businesses have had the franchise in City of London for centuries. h/t JumpCrisscross
If I remember correctly, the corporate vote traces precedent through guild votes.
There is, and in it a tradeoff. The businesses will prioritise growth over liveability and working conditions. Workers working conditions; both will select for incumbency. Residents (within and without) want living conditions and, if they’re economically literate, competition in both business and labour.
It’s an interesting topic that doesn’t deserve dismissal at face value.
I think every person should have a say in the laws where they live, and that includes where they work. Sadly most people get one vote based on one address
In Melbourne, Australia, the local government that covers the downtown area and a few surrounding suburbs gives 2 votes to businesses and 1 vote to residents. Guess what kind of policy exists? Highly pro business, growing inequality for residents.
Deleted Comment
- https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-does-one-tiny-state-set...
> CASSARA: ... overseas doing training, talking about the importance of cracking down on money laundering. And I would invariably have a student or a colleague come up to me and say, “Yeah, Mr. John, I hear you, but we’re conducting a money laundering investigation in my country, and it goes to your country, it goes to the state of Delaware. We can’t get any information about this company. Can you help us?” There was nothing I could do, and I was just embarrassed. Just embarrassed.
If these overseas people really did trace money to Delaware then they would not have a problem getting the beneficial owners because banks are required to store it under the customer due dilligence rule. If you say "well they may have given the banks misleading information" then there's no reason to think they would have given the government the correct beneficial ownership information either (courts in some circuits have held giving fake KYC data is bank fraud [punishable by up to 30 years in prison] whereas the penalty for deliberately submitting false information under the Corporate Transparency Act will be 3 years).
> WEITZMAN: ... Why would we set up a bifurcated system like that? Only because Delaware doesn’t want to add another question to its form, “Who are you?” And then ask its registering agents to verify that you are who you say you are.
> CASSARA: The bottom line is it comes down to money, okay?
Half the reason the registry was established was so that it would be *unified*. If states (plus the various territories of the US) were storing ID information all on their own special systems it would delay the implementation of the registry by decades. So they made one federal government registry. Yes, there's a trade off, but the alternative is no registry.
The audience acts like they went out of their way to get a less biased news source and edutainment
but then they skirt around everything, and all their relatable jokes are just deflections where they never gets into the nuance of whatever they just made you aware of
its like, awareness ragebait, instead of nuance. good for an overview but just the tip of the iceberg
I can't think of any compelling reason to do this.
Deleted Comment
Except it’s specifically outlawed in the bill.
This also isn’t for Delaware the state, it’s for a small town in Delaware called Seaford.
And remember, each llc has to own property in Seaford to vote in city elections. So I suppose a large group of people could spend millions of dollars to sway a city council election for a town with a few thousand residents.
Not sure how much work I'd be willing to go through to gain control of Seaford DE, though.
Introduced on: 4/20/23
Primary Sponsor: D. Short
Additional Sponsor(s): Sen. Richardson
Co-Sponsor(s):
Long Title: AN ACT TO AMEND THE CHARTER OF THE CITY OF SEAFORD RELATING TO THE CITY'S ABILITY TO AUTHORIZE ARTIFICIAL ENTITIES, LIMITED LIABILITY CORPORATIONS' PARTNERSHIPS AND TRUSTS TO VOTE IN MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS HELD IN SEAFORD.
Original Synopsis: This bill would allow the City of Seaford to authorize artificial entities, limited liability corporations' partnerships and trusts to vote in Municipal elections held in Seaford. """