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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

It’s not so crazy if you follow Delaware history.

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.

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> That all seems pretty reasonable for small resort towns.

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.

> 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.

> There is a balance of interests.

Literally what? If this isn't the meaningless bullshit it sounds like, I will be stunned.

Just as a practical example, in my area, we've got all kinds of property owned by people who live halfway across the country. I've got a particular individual in mind who lives in New York and has never resided in this state. He owns about a 1/4 mile stretch of strip mall in my parent's city. The buildings are getting rough and the roads and parking lots look like a war zone. If a similar law was enacted here, he'd get to vote in local elections in spite of the fact that his only ties to the area are in real estate holdings. He has no interest in that city being a decent place to live and I can't imagine he'd hesitate to support legislation that would increase his short-term profits at the expense of the city's residents.

That practice is pretty antithetical to modern Democratic values though. ie one person, one vote.

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.

There is a ton of Supreme Court case law that disagrees with you.[0]

>in fact it never was. The Electoral College, the Senate, the Supreme Court ensures this.

Note my use of the word modern. All of those (elected) institutions are ossified in place due to the herculean effort it would take to modify them. They are products of a time when that was very much not a settled value in the United States.

[0]https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/one-person_one-vote_rule

Note that as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, such rules allow people who own multiple LLCs to vote multiple times in the same election, in the same jurisdiction.

> There is a ton of Supreme Court case law that disagrees with you.[0]

And how much it helped roe v wade not being overturned? Case law is fine and dandy until there is political will to overturn it. Then it only matters what political opinion have majority there. And it always was some flavour of right(D or R).

Row v wade had largely been eroded by the time it was overturned. It was obviously a very big deal politically, but the operative case law was Casey v planned parenthood, which allowed for a significant amount of restrictions. Casey paved the way for the mass whittling away of abortion rights in many states before roe was officially overturned.

The roe precedent was not on nearly as firm of ground.

Though your overall point is still obviously correct, at the end of the day the court is a political institution ruled over by 9 unelected individuals.

> >in fact it never was. The Electoral College, the Senate, the Supreme Court ensures this.

> All of those (elected) institutions

Excuse me but neither the Electoral College nor the Supreme Court is elected.

The electoral college absolutely is elected and always has been. What are you talking about?

I wrote “(elected)” to explicitly exclude the Supreme Court from my statement.

Sorry I was unclear and hasty there. The EC ensures the presidency is not democratic.

It’s still Democratic, it just isn’t equally representative.

I am against the EC as well, but it isn’t representative of modern notions of democracy in America. As I said, it exists as little more than an anachronism.

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.

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.

> Thank you for steelmanning this.

For steelmanning what, and what argument or rebuttal are they making?

> Most of the other comments resolve to textual downvotes.

What does this mean?

I agree. All I can steelman from it is "it's not crazy if you know that [people have generally been able to own a vacation home and vote]"

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.

This isn’t about all Delaware corporations, it’d only allow corporations that own property in the tiny town of Seaford to vote in Seaford.

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