A Delaware beach town with 400 residents lets LLCs cast ballots, and a state judge just said that is perfectly constitutional.

"What is a 'person?' When one cuts to the heart of this case, that is the question."

— Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig Karsnitz, May 26, 2026 ruling

In a small town on the Delaware coast where corporations outnumber people by a significant margin, the concept of who gets to vote has been redefined in real time. On Monday, Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig Karsnitz issued a 20-page ruling upholding Fenwick Island's practice of allowing business entities to cast ballots in municipal elections. The decision dismissed a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Delaware that had argued the policy violated the state constitution by diluting the votes of actual human beings.

Fenwick Island has roughly 400 residents. Business entities registered there make up about 12 percent of what the town calls its "population." In 2008, the Delaware General Assembly amended the town's charter to expand voter registration rolls to include individuals who can cast votes on behalf of trusts, limited liability companies, partnerships, and corporations that own property in Fenwick.

Translation: if your LLC owns a beachfront condo, it gets a say in who runs the town council.

The judge's ruling opens with a philosophical inquiry into legal personhood. According to Karsnitz, "a person is anyone or anything that can initiate and be subject to legal proceedings." By this definition, adult humans, corporations, and institutions all qualify as persons. Minors do not. Fetuses do not. Humanoid robots do not.

"This highlights that legal personhood is dependent solely on legal recognition," the ruling states.

The decision acknowledges the absurdity of its own logic. Karsnitz wrote that "visions of faceless large corporations, or even HAL, controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction." He was referencing the malevolent artificial intelligence in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then he dismissed the concern anyway, concluding that the plaintiff had not demonstrated the policy violated the principle of "one person/entity/one vote."

The judge essentially ruled that corporations are people when it comes to voting, and anyone who finds that unsettling should take it up with the legislature rather than the courts.

Fenwick Island Mayor Natalie Magdeburger defended the practice in an interview with Reuters earlier this year. "A property owner who pays taxes and is subject to our ordinances should have a say in who represents them on our Town Council," she said.

The ACLU of Delaware has been fighting the policy since filing suit on December 4, 2025. The organization argues that with over 2 million business entities incorporated in Delaware roughly double the state's human population of about 1 million "the people of Delaware risk having their voices drowned out when towns like Fenwick Island allow corporate voting."

On its case page, the ACLU wrote: "Voting is for the people. Not corporations. We stand in firm defense of the democratic ideal: 'one person, one vote.'" As of late May, the organization was reviewing Karsnitz's decision to determine whether to appeal.

Demand Justice, a progressive legal advocacy group, summarized the problem more bluntly on X: "Corporations aren't people. They don't have kids in local schools, they don't drink the water, they can't be jailed for crimes, and they shouldn't get a vote."

The Delaware ruling did not mention Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 Supreme Court decision that affirmed corporate political spending as protected free speech and unleashed the era of super PACs and dark money. But critics immediately connected the dots. Delaware's corporate personhood laws predate Citizens United by more than a century, yet the ruling reads like the logical endpoint of the same philosophy: if corporations are people for the purpose of spending unlimited sums on elections, why not for the purpose of casting ballots?

The contrast with Hawaii could not be sharper. On May 15, Democratic Governor Josh Green signed legislation that directly challenges Citizens United by classifying corporations as "artificial persons" who do not have a constitutional right to make political donations. The law takes effect next July and was hailed by campaign finance reformers as the first state-level attempt to roll back the Supreme Court's ruling.

Hawaii State Senator Jarrett Keohokalole, a supporter of the measure, said: "As elected leaders, we do not serve artificial entities. We serve the people."

US Representative Greg Casar, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, called Hawaii's law "big news" and said it should inspire opponents of corporate political spending nationwide. "The far-right Supreme Court hijacked the Constitution to let corporations spend in our elections," Casar said. "But we are not powerless. We can fight back."

Michael Beckel, who directs the Money in Politics project for Issue One, called Hawaii's law "among the most innovative and impactful ideas to curb corporate and dark money spending in campaigns since the Supreme Court's disastrous Citizens United ruling in 2010." Tom Moore of the Center for American Progress agreed, calling it "a brave and bold step" that "will send a powerful message heard loud and clear across the Pacific and across the mainland."

The Hawaii law passed despite opposition from state Attorney General Anne Lopez, who warned that defending it in court could prove difficult and expensive. She was probably thinking of Delaware.

A writer on X put the contrast between the two states into its simplest terms: "Hawaii made a move to rein in Citizens United, and Delaware responded, 'The fuck you are.'"

Fenwick Island's corporate voting system is not an anomaly born of partisan maneuvering. It was authorized by the state legislature nearly two decades ago, long before Citizens United and long before the current administration. But it exists because Delaware has always treated corporations as something close to citizens. The state's business-friendly legal framework attracted millions of incorporations precisely because it grants entities rights that mirror those of human beings.

Karsnitz's ruling makes explicit what was always implicit: if a corporation is a person under Delaware law, then the principle of one person, one vote extends to it as well. The judge noted that most of the legal entity voters in Fenwick are trusts rather than corporations proper, but the underlying logic remains identical. Property ownership confers political voice, regardless of whether the property owner has lungs, a heartbeat, or a Social Security number.

The question is not whether Delaware's approach is corrupt. The question is whether anyone outside Delaware finds it democratic.