Who in their right mind would think this idea is anything other than trying???
Sydney, Australia.
They let business owners in the city vote in local elections. That includes anyone with an investment property in the city of Sydney boundary.
The change was brought in to get rid of the existing mayor. Funny thing is it didn’t work. Turned out most residents and businesses thought she was doing good job. She’s been the mayor since 2004.
Why? Really, I’d love to see it laid out how this will supposedly lead to a better society.
Edit: There’s absolutely no preamble on the bill.
Damn that town has a nice website. Seriously, it’s one of the nicest websites of any kind I’ve encountered this year.
Final Edit:
From the most recent town meeting where it was discussed, starting on page 9. That’s about as deep as I’ll go for now.
Then they don’t get to lobby? Right?
Well that’s not fair. The vote should at least be weighted proportionally to the number of people the company employs.
Maybe we achieve that by giving each individual employee a vote? Then, all of dem get a vote… we could call it dem-ocracy!
Weird concept. But I’d give it a try.
💀
Eh, seems like other towns in Delaware have already been doing it without incident. Doesn’t seem too outrageous to me. They’re giving people who live out of town but own businesses in town a vote in the town’s elections. Why not?
Because those people are now getting additional votes that affect an area in which they do not live. If I’m a business owner and just need employees with minimal education, what is my incentive to increase taxes to pay for education? At least if I lived there an argument could be made that my family or neighborhood would be affected. Who’s voting to increase minimum wage, or engage in conservation and beautification? Not the businesses. Having more money (to start a business or have investment properties) should not equal more votes. It already equals larger sway on elections. Why not just cut to the chase and have an out and out oligarchy?
The article itself mentions that there are almost as many businesses as there are people voting. This will not result in elections being the “will of the people.”
You’ve seen how Citizen United has led to a deluge of corporate influence on politics right? And you are not sure what the issue could be with allowing Corporations to vote? How about we just skip all these middle steps and just allow the corporations to be elected directly into public office? I’m sure they’ll have the average citizen’s interests at heart.
Let’s imagine for a moment I’m a well-to-do landlord in the town of Seaford. All of my buildings are owned by my LLC in the town. Maybe I have, let’s say, 20 residential rental properties and 5 business rental properties. I think the only logical thing for me to do once this law enters into effect is to register 25 LLCs and over the course of the year “sell” my properties off to each of those LLCs. Each LLC will be represented by either a lawyer, accountant, corporate formation agency, nominee service provider, or my wife, brother, mother, and sister.
According to the law, as written, each of these properties now has the right to vote in town elections. Maybe, to maximize its output, I use my influence in the town to split some of my properties up into new plots. Maybe I have the parking lots of my rentals carved out and sold to a “lot management company” that owns the lot and manages its upkeep. My LLCs will “rent” this lot from those companies. On the backend, those lot management LLCs are all managed by more lawyers, accountants, etc. on my payroll.
You get the picture, don’t you?
