It's specifically about corporations that own property in a specific town voting. So no you can't just spin up a bunch of LLCs to rig an election, this is about the rights of absentee landlords.
What is the smallest subplot you can split a parcel into?
And are we talking literally land, or would condo ownership suffice? (After all, you typically stack a few condos on top of one parcel of land). The smallest condo is probably dictated by some pesky human habitability rules, but what class of property has the fewest minimum-square-footage zoning rules? Retail probably has egress rules, but what about industrial spaces?
Could you create an industrial park to house a bunch of, to use a rough metaphor, independently-owned/independently-operated phone booths (or whatever other "qualifying use")?
Basically is there a category of land-use you could split ownership off at ridiculous scale, offer LLC-as-a-service to buy a bunch of them, and just for fun, tokenize the votes to provably aggregate the absentee ballots at scale via blockchain?
If it's one-entity-one-vote, what is the most cost-effective way to maximize the number of qualifying entities?
Bonus points for every order of magnitude of synthetic votes you can reasonably achieve over the fleshy variety.
In most areas, especially any that are at all developed, land parcels and minimum lot sizes are under the control of a county or city commission, council, board, etc. Subdividing a property is as expensive and time consuming as you might imagine dealing with the government, you'll probably need a lawyer to do it properly, have to appear before at at least one if not several public meetings or hearings, etc. And they will almost certainly deny any petition along the lines of the examples you offered.
Where I am, things like dividing a 5 acre rural property so that a mother-in-law can live in a cottage near her family are routinely denied.
You mean under the control of the commissions, councils, boards, etc that are being elected in these very elections? Elections in which many actual humans may not be paying attention to positions on "arcane" land use rules, but the non-human legal entities in question (or their managers) will be?
>under the control of the commissions, councils, boards, etc
Let me save you some words.
Next time just call them "the local real estate developer slime balls" because that's who makes up the vase majority of these organizations. Like maybe a particularly upstanding town might have a local banker or lawyer on one of the boards or something.
These are not democratic institutions. They are business groups that happen to be part of government.
These organizations are already in the pocket of business interests. If anything this change is destabilizing because it now means that the PE owned car-wash and the company that owns a bunch of chain franchise businesses in the town as well as every local business that owns land or the landlords thereof but is owned by people who live in the surrounding towns can push back and say "screw you, we're not all willing to bend over and take it so you can make another buck developing another street of McMansions".
Letting megacorps vote is probably bad. But I think we should see where this goes. There's a lot of "enemy of my enemy" potential here for the currently disenfrachinsed business interests to push back on the business interests that are in bed with government to the benifit of the people. Enemy of my enemy is my ally and all that.
> What is the smallest subplot you can split a parcel into?
An acre, here. See your local zoning code or land statutes for minimum lot sizes. Consult agreements that run with the land for additional restrictions.
Yes, you can. The county does not appear to be registered land (Torrens title) where the Registry would have some say in whether a transfer is valid. So you can straightforwardly hire a surveyor to draw up a plot plan with many square foot chunks, and then execute and record a different deed for each of them.
My point was that the laws regarding those minimum lot sizes are about buildable lots. Although now that I'm looking into this I think the snag would be trying to record that plot plan, where the Registry would be mechanically looking for a town approval stamp on the plan before they were willing to record it.
But a new avenue has occurred to me that actually saves money on deed costs - nothing prevents multiple corporate entities from jointly owning a piece of real estate on one deed, right? So you could conceivably create one Delaware Series LLC, create an unlimited number of distinct legal entities with that, and then write one deed that lists all of those entities as joint owners of the single piece of real estate. Basically similar to multiple residents living in one house, and each getting a vote (but applied to infinitely scalable corporate entities!)
The fundamental flaw here is the law framing the entity itself as having voting rights (also why this attracts so much attention!), whereas if it were framed such that every beneficial owner with over say 35% of the ownership interest could vote, that would be intrinsically limiting.
This idea is equally wrong for different reasons, but I do have a measure of appreciation for you having abandoned your first intrinsically broken idea upon the first resistance you encountered. Fail fast!
Why would thirty companies that owned a company together get one vote each instead of one thirtieth? The thirty companies would each have one vote in determining how to vote the one parent's vote.
(You are, however, correct to note that you can record absolute gibberish if you want to, so long as you pay the recorder. This does not effectuate a transfer of land, though; it merely serves as constructive notice to the person who is bound to look for such recorded notice, i.e., the beneficial purchaser for value. In a way, you could think of the function of a recorder as preventer of race conditions, not the database).
Well the choice was either accept the likelihood of a common restriction that seems to exist in many places, or dig into the actual specifics of the law in this Delaware county. I don't need to give myself a headache for fun.
Why would thirty companies each get a vote? Because that is what the charter says. There wouldn't be one parent company, rather the real estate would be owned by them all directly as tenants in common.
> 9. A. (2) Non-residents. Every property owner as of March 1 prior to the annual municipal election, whether a natural person or artificial entity, including but not limited to corporations, partnerships, trusts, and limited liability companies, and who is registered to vote, if provided by ordinance, shall have one (1) vote. A natural person shall be a citizen of the United States and age 18 on or before the date of the election. An artificial entity shall be a domestic entity in the State of Delaware.
So they must be Delaware entities. Another thing I'm giving up on is that the Series LLC might not work. While each Series is legally independent from the others, I think they still might not be considered distinct "entities" (once again, not looking to give myself a headache to solidly determine that).
So either do one LLC/corporation per vote, or perhaps trusts might be even cheaper (no idea what filing/recording would be required for trusts, especially to substantiate them enough to register to vote)
I apologize for being dismissive. You have read this a little more closely than I have.
Do you think Section 9A(3), which more or less says these rules would be construed under one person/entity, one vote would break your plan? I believe if you tried to have thirty voters tied to one parcel of land by joint tenancy, that would be how the court stops you. The plaintiff here is arguing vote dilution, but vote dilution gets multiplied by an arbitrary factor in your model.
IANAA. My reading is that "one person/entity one vote" is an extension of the common "one person one vote" where say owning two pieces of real estate or other qualification for an election means you still just get one vote (rather than multiple by having more stake in the outcome). Read the examples around those sections.
There might be an angle where if a given person has the voting POA from two different entities, that person would still only get a single vote, limited by being a natural person? This doesn't seem to be the intent though.
To be [close to] sure you'd have to ask a Delaware attorney, as they should have a good handle on the jurisprudence around this topic.
If there are thirty companies, and each owns a piece of land, one entity/one vote is pretty clearly observed.
If those thirty companies reconfigure their holdings so they each own one thirtieth of each of thirty parcels, under your model all of a sudden each company has thirty votes.
I believe if you tried to exploit the ambiguity in the law in a way that mattered enough for anyone to care, you would catch a lawsuit predicated on the idea that the one entity/one vote concept was violated by this trick. I think a court would approve of the idea.
I still agree with you that this law is poor, I just don’t think this exploit flies in court. But no one knows until they try.
For now. Corporations rule the world, and there's nothing that a few bribes here and there can't fix. Hell, they've gotten the right to vote, in spite of all common sense and constitutional arguments. What makes you think they won't be able to go all the way and take over the entire democratic process?
Why not? Isn't it fundamentally the same idea as apartment complex tenets getting votes? Why couldn't a business sell off lockers to companies giving them voting access? Walk in Closets? Very small room apartments? What's the minimum size of real-estate needed?
Except if I really wanted to be an awful human being, I'd just buy property, subdivide it, and then multiply my votes in the town election by the number of property units I've individually sold to my various LLCs.
This is kind of a violation of the "one man one vote" ideal that is the bedrock of our society. It easily turns in to "money buys influence" which is exactly the opposite of what made the US a great country to live in. If you don't understand that and you're a US Citizen you should really retake the civics / political science classes from high school.
I find myself defending this shitty ruling (which I honestly think is bad, but bad for completely other reasons) the ruling basically says, since corporations are not using this to dilute the vote it's fine, which basically means in other words, if corporations where to do the shenanigans you're suggesting, the judge is open to revising the ruling.
say I partitipate in .. 8 businesses in the district, and all of them are independent corporate entities that own the land they operate on. and each of them has multiple owners. I have some influence in the vote of all of these companies, and maybe we can even assume that most of the owners have similar views on things like property taxes in districts they don't reside in.
There is no right for non-residents of a city to vote in that city elections just because they own property there. Owning that property via a LLC shouldn't change that.
Why can't corporations be toen councilors or mayors in those same towns? A privilege availed to other voters there.
I'm being sarcastic because I don't like it. Corporations are a simulacrum of people, and at best, their personhhood a useful legal fiction under very limited number of scenarios.
> Where a voter is entitled
to vote by virtue of being both a resident and as an owner of real
property, that voter shall be entitled to only one vote; where a voter
is entitled to vote by ownership of two or more parcels of real
property, that voter shall be entitled to only one vote.
> Any legal entity other than a natural person entitled to vote, must
cast its vote by a duly executed and notarized power of attorney from
the legal entity granting the authority to cast its vote to its
designated attorney-in-fact… The person casting the ballot for such
entity shall be age 18 on or before the date of the election and a
citizen of the United States.
Also what constitutes ownership here? Couldn't some Enterprising Individuals open 100 shell companies, pool together resources and form the Legalize Asbestos Consortium, the Consortium buys a plot of land and then each stakeholder of the Consortium counts as an owner of the plot of land?
FWIW, it sounds like the judge may be open to ruling against such an action. From his decision at https://aboutblaw.com/blQg:
> Even if Plaintiff had made a “vote dilution” or “one person/one vote” claim under the Equal Protection Clause, it fails. Plaintiff does not assert facts that would adequately support such a claim. Plaintiff does not allege... that natural person voters are a minority or are politically cohesive [or] that entity property owners vote sufficiently as a bloc to usually defeat the preferred candidates of natural persons.
Although he also notes that the recent Callais case, severely weakening section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, may change this - and, of course, waiting until the Legalize Asbestos Consortium is doing its thing and trying to file a lawsuit is much more complex than preemptively saying "only natural persons can vote."
Oh? Which industry regularly uses this as a part of standard business for consumers? Unless... you're just pretending to be too obtuse to understand the extremely obvious implication here.
What would probably happen is that all the the owners of the property would have to designate one POA among themselves to represent their collective interest in that property.
It does say that multiple owners of a single property can not have their voting rights apportioned by value, as this would be dilution or would not fit one person/one vote.
IANAA. It would seemed to be recorded, not registered, land. Which means I wouldn't think approval would be required in the first place (the lot isn't going to be buildable though, of course]
besides zoning laws, the judge fairly explicitly states that one of the reasons he thinks it's fine is because corporations aren't doing these kinds of shenanigans, so if you were to do something like that he might revise the ruling.
I own property in a nearby town but it's an investment; I don't live there. I'm unable to vote in their local elections. I have not heard of property ownership being a qualification to vote since the 1800s.
I own property there, I pay property taxes there (at the highest "non-owner-occupied" rate), in my case I'm actively operating a business not (just) a passive investor. Why should I have zero say in how those taxes are spent, or other local governance? I'm not a disinterested bystander.
I pay sales taxes in other cities I travel in, I too should get a say in how they run their government. Money, after all, is the top virtue in a democracy; if it wasn't why did the founders ensure that slavers had equal representation?
> Money, after all, is the top virtue in a democracy
"The Founders" of the US (however you want to form that category) were not the arbiters of what is virtuous about Democracy. Democracy is orthogonal to US law and intent. The PR for the US has always tried to message that they are a singular ethos.
I would say the difference is that as a property owner I have a long-term local presence and vested interest there, I am (in theory) motivated to make thoughtful decisions about local governance, as opposed to a disinterested bystander passing through and paying local sales tax on a soft drink.
My parents own two properties, but they have to decide which one they are residents of, because they are not entitled to a say in how both local governments are run.
If I am a long-term owner of Google stock, I still don't get a say in how Mountain View runs their city. A "vested financial interest" in an area should not be enough to give one a vote on local laws.
I guess the Walton family has a long-term local presence in basically every mid to large town and city in america. Same with Mcdonalds Corp. They have vested interests there (crushing competition, raising prices, lower quality, profit!). And their bigly profits certainly show a more significant vested interest as opposed to just a small property owner or worse a bystander or citizen.
Because you have a vested interest in the success of that region by owning land (and a business) at that location. You have skin in the game compared to someone who is just renting and can easily flee to a different city if they vote poorly.
>renting and can easily flee to a different city if they vote poorly.
Nitpick:
I think you're correct that the problem is people who do selfish shortsighted things and leave others holding the bag but I think you are blaming the wrong people.
Pretty much everyone from Marx to MLK to Rand and Sowell identifies somme sort of class of "comfortable enough to meddle in things to further their self interest at everyone else's detriment" demographics as the root of a whole bunch of bad stuff.
In most municipalities middle class who are too tied into the place (often through home ownership) to just get out that provide the bulk of the political will to do short sighted "feels good" stuff that solves some minor problem they have but screws the whole place on a 20-50yr timeline (by which time the individuals responsible will have retired and cashed out to Idaho or Florida or whatever).
Owning property through a corporation is trivial. 3 of my nearby neighbors are owned via an LLC (rentals).
* Start an LLC/C-corp for a trivial amount of money.
* Purchase land, but instead of paying with it via a personal check, you need a touch of foresight so you can "capitalize" the corporation you just started. Write the check from the corporation, instead of your personal checkbook.
IANAA, but having looked into it this does very little to actually reduce the liability exposure from small businesses. The minute you do anything yourself, you start to accrue personal liability. The only way to keep the corporate veil intact is to hire other people. So it only works if you're rich enough to hire a management company to do everything (screen tenants, maintenance/inspections, supervise contractors, etc) and you manage it as a purely financial investment. Just like the anonymity aspect doesn't work out in most states unless you're willing to shell out for an attorney to be the manager. In general these laws aren't made to help little people.
yeah so it sounds like if you did this IN THIS TOWN and didn't also live in the town you'd get a vote. I'm not sure if you'd get a vote if you owned the land directly but for all I know you might.
There is a specific medial jargon developed form latin designed to be unambiguous and often intentionally different from lay words is one thing you're hearing in American tv, the other is that many technical words are English words but of latin origin.
no they have a securities license. Also while a lot of stuff in stock markets are gambling like, the stock market is a positive sum game where very basic techniques (e.g. index investing) have positive expected values.
The buyers and sellers are not the only ones there, there is also the companies injecting money into it via dividends and stock buy backs, I can be a winner on the stock market without there having to be a loser.
Shapefiles, the legacy multifile file format for geospatial stuff that is still an incredibly important interchange format since it has basically universal support is built around DBF files.
So despite it being an incredibly old file format it's still used constantly in the GIS world and it's probably not going to go away because while it's not a good format, it does basically everything at to at least a mediocre level which can't be said for any of the newer formats that tend to do a few things great but other things terribly.
Like Geojson is great for interchange but you can't really do in place edits or even in place seeking from disk, shapefile can.
Sqlite allows great editing and seeking but you can't use that in a browser without doing something complicated like compiling the sqlite binary to js or wasm.
Ok, I'll present my evidence an you can present yours.
In the latest Marcel Grossman meeting (2024) there was no string theory parallel session but there was an explicit Loop Quantum Gravity session: https://indico.icranet.org/event/8/program
So string theory is now pretty officially an "also ran", definitely not a leading theory.
he pretty explicitly states that AES 128 is not in any imminent danger and mandating a switch to 256 would distract from the actual thing he thinks needs to happen.
So why argue about whether AES-256 is worth it if we can just literally replace those 3 characters and be done with the upgrade? This was the smart move already in 2001 when Shor's algorithm was known and computers fast enough that we don't notice the difference. At least to me, it seems like less bikeshedding will be done if we abandon AES-128 and don't have to deal with all the people left wondering if that's truly ok
Then again, something something md5. 'Just replace those bytes with sha256()' is apparently also hard. But it's a lot easier than digging into different scenarios under which md5 might still be fine and accepting that use-case, even if only for new deployments
There's a whole lot of cases where the tokens are temporary in nature with an easy cut-over, either dropping old entries or re-encrypting while people are not at work. We tend to think of big commerce like amazon or google that need 24/7 uptime, but most individual systems are not of that scale
In most other cases you increment the version number for the new data format and copy-paste the (d)e(n)cryption code for each branch of the if statement, substituting 128 for 256. That's still a trivial change to substitute one algorithm for another
Only if there exists no upgrade path in the first place, you have a big problem upgrading the rest of your cryptography anyway and here it's worth evaluating per-case whether the situation is considered vulnerable before doing a backwards-incompatible change. Just like how people are (still) dealing with md5
I'm working on just that in some IoT context, and a lots of chips I have to deal with only have hardware support for AES-128, so it's a little more complicated...
You can’t just throw “Grover’s algorithm is difficult to parallelize” etc. It’s not same as implementation, especially when it gets to quantum computers. It’s very specialized.
The page isn't allowed to know what extensions you have, instead LinkedIn is looking for various evidence that extensions are installed, like if an extension was to create a specific html element, LinkedIn could look for evidence of that element being there.
Since the extensions are running on the same page as LinkedIn (some of them are explicitly modifying the LinkedIn the website) it's impossible to sandbox them so that linked in can't see evidence of them. And yes this is how a site knows you have an ad blocker is installed.
However, there are other proof of concept of another attack vector to bypass this by using timing difference when fetching those resources.
I help maintaining uBO's lists and I've seen one real world case doing this. It's a trash shortener site, and they use the `web_accessible_resources` method as one of their anti-adblock methods. Since it's a trash site, I didn't care much later.
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