The ACLU of Delaware filed a lawsuit Thursday against Fenwick Island for allowing corporations to vote in local elections.
Fenwick Island saw 109 votes cast by non-human, artificial entities in the 2024 election, according to the ACLU. That’s 23% of all votes cast in the municipality.
ACLU’s civic engagement counsel Andrew Bernstein said that’s a problem because there’s a real chance those votes swayed the outcome of the election.
And that could be a concern statewide. Bernstein added there are approximately 2 million business entities in Delaware and only 800 thousand registered voters.
“So when you look at it that way – having these kinds of open provisions that allow for corporations with minor interests in the town to register to vote – you are opening the door potentially for there being huge dilution in future instances of corporations were to take broader advantage of these loose provisions,” Bernstein said.
Bernstein said in his team’s study of the state’s constitution, they found it protects the right to vote to a greater extent than the federal constitution. Under that interpretation, Bernstein argued corporations having votes goes against Delaware’s Constitution.
Delaware made headlines in 2023 when Seaford city officials pushed to allow businesses to place votes in municipal elections. The State House passed a bill that would have permitted the change, but it died in the Senate after it went into recess at the end of 2023’s legislative session.
Bernstein said Delaware’s court should recognize Fenwick Island’s voting policies as an issue.
“I think it can be easy to get lost in some of the small details here, but at the end of the day, we live in a country where democracy is by the people and for the people,” Bernstein said. “That's been the refrain of constitutional democracy in the United States.”
In its August 2024 election, Fenwick Island’s closest seat was decided by just 55 votes.
“That's short of the 109 votes cast by the artificial entities, meaning that there is a real chance that those votes could have determined the outcome of the election.”
The ACLU reported this lawsuit is the first known lawsuit challenging artificial entity voting in Delaware and in the U.S. Fenwick Island’s next local election in August 1, 2026.
