{"id":1098170,"date":"2023-06-21T15:05:56","date_gmt":"2023-06-21T15:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2023\/06\/delaware-corporations-voting-legislation-citizens-united\/"},"modified":"2023-06-21T15:11:31","modified_gmt":"2023-06-21T15:11:31","slug":"in-delaware-corporations-are-dangerously-close-to-acquiring-the-right-to-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/06\/21\/in-delaware-corporations-are-dangerously-close-to-acquiring-the-right-to-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"In Delaware, Corporations Are Dangerously Close to Acquiring the Right to Vote"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

In an effort to expand the Supreme Court\u2019s 2010 Citizens United<\/cite> decision, which gave corporations personhood and free speech rights, Delaware\u2019s Democratic-controlled legislature is considering a Republican bill that would give corporations the right to vote.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden delivers remarks after attending a virtual coronavirus briefing with medical experts on October 28, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. (Drew Angerer \/ Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

Democratic president Joe Biden has called his home \u201cthe corporate state<\/a> of Delaware,\u201d and Republican senator Mitt Romney has insisted that \u201ccorporations are people<\/a>, my friend.\u201d Embodying that bipartisan spirit in post\u2013Citizens United<\/em> America, Delaware Democrats are now advancing a Republican bill that would allow corporations to directly vote in a municipal election.<\/p>\n

As GOP states across the country aim to limit voter participation, Delaware\u2019s Democratic-controlled legislature has been considering a bill to allow the expansion of the franchise to businesses. The Republican\u00a0legislation<\/a> would explicitly permit the city of Seaford, Delaware, \u201cto authorize artificial entities, limited liability corporations\u2019 partnerships and trusts to vote in municipal elections.\u201d<\/p>\n

The legislature has until June 30, when the legislative session ends, to vote on the bill.<\/p>\n

With hundreds of thousands of corporations officially\u00a0headquartered<\/a> in a small Wilmington warehouse, Delaware has long been known for its business fealty. The state\u2019s new legislation would allow corporations to upend the balance of power in Seaford, a small eight thousand\u2013person city twenty miles north of Salisbury, Maryland. Just 340 people voted in the most recent election on April 15 \u2014 and the bill would potentially provide as many as 234 votes to businesses in the community.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, lawmakers in Nevada \u2014 known as\u00a0\u201cthe Delaware of the West<\/a>\u201d\u00a0\u2014 considered\u00a0legislation<\/a> from its then Democratic governor to allow corporations to create their own governments. Now, Delaware could go even further than that failed legislation, giving limited liability companies, or LLCs, the right to vote not only in referenda, but also in regular municipal elections.<\/p>\n

Critics say the move is an outgrowth of the Supreme Court\u2019s 2010 decision in\u00a0Citizens United,\u00a0<\/em>which\u00a0<\/em>allowed an unprecedented flow of corporate money into elections and asserted that corporations have both personhood and free speech rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter\u00a0Citizens United<\/em>, this is another step down the road to corporate tyranny,\u201d Claire Snyder-Hall, executive director of the progressive watchdog group Common Cause Delaware, told the\u00a0Lever<\/em>, \u201cIt\u2019s bad enough that Citizens United<\/em> gives corporations free speech rights. Now Seaford wants to give voting rights to corporations.\u201d<\/p>\n

On\u00a0April<\/a>\u00a011<\/a>, the Seaford City Council voted 3-2 to pass a charter change that would allow them to put corporations on the voter rolls of the city. According to former city council member Jose Santos, who opposed the change, the process felt \u201crushed\u201d and the deciding vote came from the city\u2019s mayor, David Genshaw, who also sponsored the charter change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt didn\u2019t come out of the people, it came out of the mayor,\u201d said Santos. \u201cI didn\u2019t feel like the people were supporting it. In my eyes, that was not a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Genshaw attracted controversy in late 2021 when he oversaw the\u00a0passage<\/a> of a local ordinance mandating cremation or burial of fetal remains, an ordinance which triggered a costly lawsuit against the city from the state attorney general. Another city council member said of the matter, \u201cThis, in my opinion, is more of a personal agenda, and it\u2019s unfortunate we\u2019re using the people of Seaford, and the resources, to drive this agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the April election, Santos lost his seat by fifty-four votes.<\/p>\n

The charter change must be approved by the Delaware state legislature. The Democratic-controlled legislature appears to be poised to do so with the potential passage of\u00a0HB 121<\/a>. The party has not expressed plans to oppose the legislation, despite the fact that the bill\u2019s sponsors are Seaford\u2019s Republican state representative and senator.<\/p>\n

State House speaker Peter Schwartzkopf (D) said<\/a>\u00a0in a committee hearing in May that he is \u201ckind of caught in a pickle here.\u201d He said, \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a good idea. But I don\u2019t think I want to vote to stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schwartzkopf did not respond to a request for comment from the\u00a0Lever.<\/em><\/p>\n

Delaware has long been a testing ground for corporate control of democracy. The state is one of just a few that do not charge corporations income tax and allow corporation officers to hide themselves behind a vast web<\/a>\u00a0of secrecy.<\/p>\n

Delaware is also home to the two-hundred-year-old Chancery Court, which presides over corporate disputes and helps give the state its pro-business reputation. Its business court has been a model for twenty-five other states, often delivering more favorable outcomes to corporations than regular district courts would.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time that corporate voting has been raised in the state. In 2018, a single person voted thirty-one times in a referendum using his web of LLCs in Newark, Delaware. The resulting<\/a> uproar led the thirty-thousand-person city to change its voting rules to prohibit the practice from occurring again.<\/p>\n

The prior year, in 2017, the city of Rehoboth Beach, which is also in Schwartzkopf\u2019s district, shot down a proposal from that city to allow LLCs to vote in local elections. The city had previously allowed trusts and nonresident property owners the right to vote and already allowed LLCs to vote in referendums.<\/p>\n

Seaford also allows local property owners to vote in local elections, even if they live elsewhere. Snyder-Hall at Common Cause Delaware voiced concern about the repercussions of the legislature allowing Seaford corporations the right to vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gives wealthier people the right to vote twice \u2014 once in Seaford, and once in the city where they live,\u201d she said. \u201cI consider it another form of voter suppression, except with HB 121 they\u2019re not trying to block voting, but dilute voting in the town.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, progressive state legislators introduced a bill that would issue a\u00a0blanket ban<\/a> on corporate voting in Delaware.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n

You can subscribe to David Sirota\u2019s investigative journalism project, the\u00a0Lever<\/i>, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democratic president Joe Biden has called his home \u201cthe corporate state of Delaware,\u201d and Republican senator Mitt Romney has insisted that \u201ccorporations are people, my friend.\u201d Embodying that bipartisan spirit in post\u2013Citizens United America, Delaware Democrats are now advancing a Republican bill that would allow corporations to directly vote in a municipal election. As GOP [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098170"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1098170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1098171,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098170\/revisions\/1098171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1098170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1098170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1098170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}