05/31/2026
Corporations can now vote in American elections. Not dark money. Not lobbying. Actually casting ballots. In Delaware, a judge just ruled that LLCs, trusts, and corporations have the legal right to vote in local elections alongside human citizens.
This is real life.
In Fenwick Island's 2024 municipal election, 109 votes were cast by non-human entities. That was 23% of all ballots counted. Town council seats. Tax decisions. Rules governing what those same corporations are allowed to do. Decided partly by the corporations themselves.
The ACLU sued to stop it. The judge said no.
Here's the part that should make your jaw drop: Delaware has over 2 million business entities incorporated in the state. It has fewer than 800,000 registered human voters.
The corporations outnumber the people. By more than two to one. And now they can vote.
What just happened in Delaware is not a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. It is the destination this road was always heading toward.
Thom Hartmann at Common Dreams has been sounding the alarm on this for years, and his new piece on the Delaware ruling is essential reading.
He traces the whole ugly lineage: a fraudulent footnote buried in an 1886 railroad case, quietly mutating decade by decade through Buckley v. Valeo, First National Bank v. Bellotti, and finally Citizens United, each ruling handing corporations a little more of what was supposed to belong to us.
One corrupt headnote in 1886. One hundred and forty years later, corporations vote.
The next Fenwick Island election is August 1, 2026. Corporations can register to vote through June 30.
And Fenwick Island is not alone. Several other Delaware towns already allow this. The question is not whether it spreads. The question is how fast.
A vote is supposed to represent a life. A family. A future. Something that can be hurt, that can struggle, that has something real at stake.
A corporation cannot suffer. It cannot be drafted. It will never lie awake at 2am worried about the rent or the hospital bill. It has no kids in public schools. It has no body the climate can destroy.
But it can now help decide who makes the laws it has to follow. Who sets its tax rate. Who regulates its behavior.
This is not a slippery slope. We are already at the bottom.
