Skip to content Skip to footer

Delaware House Tees Up Bill to Allow Corporations to Vote

“After Citizens United, this is another step down the road to corporate tyranny,” one opponent of the bill said.

The Delaware Legislative Hall in downtown Dover, Delaware.

The Delaware House has teed up a vote on a bill that would give businesses a vote in the town of Seaford, Delaware — a proposal with frightening implications for elections in a time when lawmakers are increasingly targeting voting rights.

The bill allows Seaford — a town of roughly 8,500 people — to amend its charter to allow non-resident business owners to cast a vote in local elections, meaning that corporate entities and businesses would enjoy the same voting rights as actual citizens in the town. Rather than the democratic principle of “one person, one vote,” the bill codifies the principle of “one person/entity/one vote,” as the bill text reads.

Though a business owner living in Seaford wouldn’t be allowed to vote in a local election twice, a business owner who resides out of town would be allowed to cast a vote. This means that a business owner would get to vote multiple times: in the place they live in as a citizen, and in Seaford or any other place with a similar law where their business is located.

The bill passed the state House Administration Committee unanimously last month. The legislature has set a vote on the bill for Tuesday.

There are 234 entities registered in Seaford. This means that business owners could potentially be the deciding factor in elections, as only 340 people total voted in the last city council election in April; one city council member lost his reelection by 54 votes.

Voting rights advocates have denounced the bill, saying that it erodes democratic values and projects a dangerous message that businesses should enjoy the same rights as people.

“‘One person, one vote’ is a long agreed upon principle that governs our elections. Proponents of this bill have tried to frame this as an innocuous way to give business owners more power, but in reality, this legislation has the power to transform our elections for the worse,” said Claire Snyder-Hall, executive director of watchdog group Common Cause Delaware.

“In tandem with Delaware’s lenient incorporation regulations, this legislation could give LLCs, trusts, and outsiders the power to dominate Seaford’s elections,” Snyder-Hall continued. “Artificial entities should not have voting rights.”

If the legislature approves the proposal, it wouldn’t be the first time in Delaware, where incorporated businesses outnumber the population 2 to 1, due in large part to the state’s lenient corporate income tax laws that allow business owners to stay anonymous.

In Newark, Delaware, the city council was forced to specify that businesses don’t get a vote after one property manager voted 31 times in a 2018 referendum greenlighting $28 million in capital investments.

Some progressive lawmakers have introduced legislation to ban towns from allowing businesses to vote in municipal elections, but the bill has not seen any movement.

The Seaford proposal harkens to centuries past when voting rights in the U.S. were restricted to landowners, as was the case in the 1700s and 1800s; during much of this time, only white men who owned land could vote. To this day, white people are overrepresented in business ownership.

In other words, the proposal is a form of voter suppression, diluting the views of actual people while giving favor to business owners. Snyder-Hall also likened the proposal to a worse version of Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that granted corporations the same right to free speech in campaign finance as individuals.

“After Citizens United, this is another step down the road to corporate tyranny,” Snyder Hall told The Lever. “It’s bad enough that Citizens United gives corporations free speech rights. Now Seaford wants to give voting rights to corporations.”

Help us Prepare for Trump’s Day One

Trump is busy getting ready for Day One of his presidency – but so is Truthout.

Trump has made it no secret that he is planning a demolition-style attack on both specific communities and democracy as a whole, beginning on his first day in office. With over 25 executive orders and directives queued up for January 20, he’s promised to “launch the largest deportation program in American history,” roll back anti-discrimination protections for transgender students, and implement a “drill, drill, drill” approach to ramp up oil and gas extraction.

Organizations like Truthout are also being threatened by legislation like HR 9495, the “nonprofit killer bill” that would allow the Treasury Secretary to declare any nonprofit a “terrorist-supporting organization” and strip its tax-exempt status without due process. Progressive media like Truthout that has courageously focused on reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza are in the bill’s crosshairs.

As journalists, we have a responsibility to look at hard realities and communicate them to you. We hope that you, like us, can use this information to prepare for what’s to come.

And if you feel uncertain about what to do in the face of a second Trump administration, we invite you to be an indispensable part of Truthout’s preparations.

In addition to covering the widespread onslaught of draconian policy, we’re shoring up our resources for what might come next for progressive media: bad-faith lawsuits from far-right ghouls, legislation that seeks to strip us of our ability to receive tax-deductible donations, and further throttling of our reach on social media platforms owned by Trump’s sycophants.

We’re preparing right now for Trump’s Day One: building a brave coalition of movement media; reaching out to the activists, academics, and thinkers we trust to shine a light on the inner workings of authoritarianism; and planning to use journalism as a tool to equip movements to protect the people, lands, and principles most vulnerable to Trump’s destruction.

We urgently need your help to prepare. As you know, our December fundraiser is our most important of the year and will determine the scale of work we’ll be able to do in 2025. We’ve set two goals: to raise $110,000 in one-time donations and to add 1350 new monthly donors by midnight on December 31.

Today, we’re asking all of our readers to start a monthly donation or make a one-time donation – as a commitment to stand with us on day one of Trump’s presidency, and every day after that, as we produce journalism that combats authoritarianism, censorship, injustice, and misinformation. You’re an essential part of our future – please join the movement by making a tax-deductible donation today.

If you have the means to make a substantial gift, please dig deep during this critical time!

With gratitude and resolve,

Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy