Did you know companies can vote in Delaware?

0:01Cardie Marshall:NPR.

0:06Cardie Marshall:We're entering one of the most contested election seasons ever. Americans are arguing over everything from how you can vote to who can vote. But in Fenwick Island, a tiny town in Delaware, the fight is whether or not you have to be human to vote. And no, we are not talking about AI.

0:24Diane Swonk:That's because in Fenwick Island, companies are allowed to vote. In fact, the ACLU sued Fenwick Island over this, but the case was dismissed. And now they're appealing to the state Supreme Court.

0:36Cardie Marshall:But Fenwick Island's mayor says Fenwick Island's system works just fine. Thank you very much.

0:42Diane Swonk:You know, one of the things that was most disturbing to me to hear is that somehow somebody thought that corporations were taking over Fenwick. And that's just so far from the truth. This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Ricky Mulvey here with friend of the show, Sally Herships. It's good to have you back, Sally.

1:01Cardie Marshall:Hi. Thanks for having me.

1:02Diane Swonk:Today on the show, we look at the fight over voting rights for non-humans.

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1:58Diane Swonk:Dell.com slash Dell dash pro built for you.

2:03Cardie Marshall:Fenwick Island is the kind of place with a country store that makes its own fudge, like Rum Raisin and Rocky Road. It's a beach town. It's small, roughly one mile from tip to tip. When Natalie Magdeberger joined the town council here in 2021, her mom was mayor. Now, Natalie is mayor, and she's in her fourth term. It's a volunteer gig, so no paycheck.

2:26Diane Swonk:Love Fenwick Island. Grew up here, so blessed. You know, I'm Natalie Magdeberger, Wayne and Vicki's daughter. You know, it's, you know these folks. Like, I worked at a restaurant. My kids worked at the same restaurant for the children of the people that I worked for. It just, it's part of my fabric and my core, and it's a beautiful place to live. Businesses and trusts have been allowed to vote in Fenwick since 2008, and non-humans can also vote in some elections in at least four other Delaware towns. But when the ACLU sued Fenwick in December, the town got a lot of attention and some of it negative.

3:06Cardie Marshall:Yeah, I have spent a long time reading the Reddit posts. In fact, Natalie didn't want to do an interview at first. We exchanged many emails. She wrote that the world is so divisive these days. she was worried that a story on voting in Fenwick wouldn't fairly present the issues. She says there's a lot of inaccurate information out there about her town. What are you concerned that people might think, and what do you want to express about it?

3:32Diane Swonk:Well, to understand Fenwick, you have to go to our beginnings. Natalie says Fenwick got its start as a vacation town. There was no sewer or water. There were no roads. It was a seasonal community. It opened up Memorial Day. It closed down on Labor Day.

3:50Cardie Marshall:When the town was incorporated back in 1953, all property owners 21 or older could vote in local elections, including people whose places on Fenwick Island were second homes, vacation spots. Delaware is one of 11 states that allows some kind of non-resident voting.

4:08Diane Swonk:Fast forward to 2008, and Natalie says estate lawyers started telling people to put their houses in trusts to avoid having their kids go through a lengthy court process after they die, and to lower taxes their kids would owe on the property. But when someone puts property into a trust, it's often no longer in their name. And you had multiple families that were losing votes and wanted to have a say, you know, and they did the artificial entity so that the trusts could vote. And then the business owners asked if they could have a vote, too. And it seemed fair. You know, a lot of our ordinances that we write, you know, what time people go to bed, how bright the lights are, those are going to affect everyone, businesses as well as, you know, residents.

4:54Diane Swonk:And they should have at least an opportunity to vote for who's going to be on their council to make those decisions. To me, it's the purest form of democracy.

5:04Cardie Marshall:Natalie says everyone who pays taxes, businesses and people, if you can provide them with a say, you should.

5:11Diane Swonk:No taxation without representation for people or estate planning documents, Sally. That is right.

5:17Cardie Marshall:I pay my taxes and I want to say. The town has just over 900 registered voters, according to court documents. In Fenwick's most recent election, just over 20 % of the votes were cast by non-humans. The, quote, overwhelming majority of the non-human registered voters are trusts, not companies. But Delaware is famous for being business friendly. One of its main businesses is registering LLCs and corporations.

5:45Diane Swonk:And all you need to register is a name and a Delaware address. You don't even need a real office.

5:50Cardie Marshall:But are you worried at all about a day where, you know, Microsoft could vote or Apple could vote?

5:59Diane Swonk:Why would they want to vote for a Fenwick Island town election? You know, would they care what time our quiet hour begins? Because that's all they're voting for. They're not voting for a statewide election. They're not voting for a national election. The only say they get is what happens in Fenwick Island from a Fenwick Island town council, seven individuals. So why would they, why would there be such a draw to do that? Natalie says the town has protections in place, like a rule. Each person only gets to vote once, even if they own more than one property or business. But Delaware State Representative Carrie Evelyn Harris has proposed a bill that would bar non-humans from voting across the state.

6:47Diane Swonk:She says businesses should get a voice, but not at the same volume as humans. That includes LLCs people sometimes use to buy second homes. Being able to have a voice as a corporation versus a voice as a human being is very different. And we have seen the impact of confusing the two, whether it deals with money and politics or, in this case, the ability to choose who gets to represent the community.

7:19Cardie Marshall:Carrie says residents may have different interests than business owners, like someone who owns an Airbnb versus someone who lives in a town full time. So the people that live there might say, we don't want a whole bunch of Airbnbs. Or if there are, we want to tax them in a different way.

7:35Diane Swonk:She's also worried about wealth disparity, business and property owners getting more of a say than others.

7:41Cardie Marshall:Voting rights have a complicated history in the U.S., so we wanted to check in with an expert, Alex Kesar. He's a professor of history and public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School. His book, The Right to Vote, The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

8:01Diane Swonk:Democracy, defined pretty much throughout the world, has been about the rights of people, meaning natural persons. We ran three voting rights concepts by him. First, property ownership. In the U.S., you used to have to own property to vote. But by the mid-1800s, those requirements were eliminated, considered undemocratic. Ben Franklin was famous for telling a story to make that point. The story is Franklin told it, he said, Well, there's a farmer who goes to vote and he brings his jackass as evidence of voting property. So he's allowed to vote. A year later, he comes back to vote, but his jackass has died and they don't let him vote.

8:43Diane Swonk:So pray tell, Franklin said, in whom does the right to vote to adhere, the man or the jackass?

8:51Cardie Marshall:Wait, is a jackass a mule or a donkey?

8:54Diane Swonk:It could be Johnny Knoxville.

8:56Cardie Marshall:Next, we asked Alex about the argument, no taxation without representation. We got a thumbs down. He says it is a spurious argument.

9:05Diane Swonk:Basically, people get taxed all the time without getting to vote, like sales tax. So we moved on to residency and voting. You can imagine a very wealthy person who had houses in five different places voting everywhere. That would not seem very reasonable.

9:20Cardie Marshall:Alec says there are reasonable arguments that support non-resident voting, but the law is meant to say that to vote for governing bodies, you should be, as a person, directly affected. And that can only be true in one place.

9:36Diane Swonk:Natalie Fenwick Island's mayor says letting non-human entities vote may not work in every jurisdiction, but in Fenwick Island it does, at least for now.

9:51Cardie Marshall:This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie with engineering by Travis Hagen. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kate Kincannon is the show's editor. The Indicator is a production of NPR.

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