Consider the following headline of a recent court ruling on voting rights and non-human entities in Delaware:
As a former election official and municipal administrator, I am interested in understanding and exploring the mechanics of administering elections that include non-human voters. The wide configurations of a tax-paying entity that owns property that are eligible and want to register to vote create new complications for election officials to process voter registration forms, maintain voter rolls, and ensure all voters have equal access to the ballot box in an election. But that could be a future post.
So, tying this back to the LSAT, I thought it would be an interesting practice to treat this situation as part of a logical reasoning section one might see on the LSAT to evaluate the ruling.
LSAT Background
When I was still a college student, I was interested in government and politics, so the “logical” next step at the time was going to law school (spoiler alert: it did not happen). I started studying for the LSAT, which used to be a prerequisite test for law school admissions in the U.S. until 2025.
The LSAT has three sections: logic games, reading comprehension, and logical reasoning. The premise of the test is to evaluate specific reading, reasoning, and analytical skills needed to succeed in law school:
Applying general legal rules to specific facts
Spotting patterns across multiple cases
Effectively communicating those arguments both in writing and in the courtroom.
In theory, courts take the time, follow proper protocols, and leave no stone unturned in determining the facts of a complex situation and issuing a logically sound, impartial judgment that has ripple effects. A ruling could fundamentally change the course of a person’s life and the course of a community’s future, especially if it is used as precedent.
While the LSAT is not itself a framework courts use to evaluate rulings, the concept of logical reasoning is a proxy for the analytical skills law schools explicitly claim to teach and courts are expected to embody.
Background / LSAT Stimulus
A Delaware court upholds voting by companies in a small town’s election by stating that the town charter allows it and the town charter does not violate an elections clause. Thus, non-living entities in Fenwick Island, Delaware, can register to vote and cast ballots in local elections, including, but not limited to: living trusts, corporations, and other companies.
Eligibility to Register to Vote
In Delaware elections, only registered voters can cast a ballot and the requirements for registering to vote in Delaware include:
A citizen of the United States; AND
A resident of Delaware (Delaware is your home); AND
Will be 18 years old on or before the date of the next General Election.
You may NOT register to vote in Delaware if you:
Were convicted of a felony and have not fully discharged your sentence; OR
Were convicted of a disqualifying felony and have not been pardoned.
Eligibility to Form a Corporation in Delaware
To form a corporation in Delaware, almost anyone, including U.S. and non-residents, can form a corporation in Delaware, regardless of where they physically live or do business. While non-U.S. residents are welcome, Delaware generally restricts company formation for individuals or entities residing in embargoed or sanctioned countries (such as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Russia).
Involved Parties [content copied from Reuters]
The American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware sued the town, arguing it violated the elections clause of the state constitution. The group sought a court order blocking Fenwick Island from counting votes by “non-human artificial entities” in future elections.
The Mayor of Fenwick Island commented, “the city believes a property owner who pays taxes and is subject to our ordinances should have a say in who represents them on our Town Council.”
Judge Karsnitz ruled on the case that the town’s charter did not violate the state’s constitution’s elections clause, which says, “All elections shall be free and equal.” The judge said the clause has been understood by courts to mean free from fraud and noted there were no allegations of racial or other kinds of discrimination.
LSAT-Style Evaluation
Now, the fun part. Let’s evaluate the ruling based on the question types we would typically find on the LSAT. As a note, my analysis evaluates the ruling's logical structure from a civic and governance perspective rather than as a Delaware municipal law specialist.
Identify the core flaw in the ruling:
Assumption in Sufficient Justification for Voting Rights: The ruling cannot stand without the premise that property ownership and tax obligation are sufficient to confer standing for voting rights.
In the ruling, there is a foundational assumption that taxation and property ownership are sufficient to justify voting rights. This is not established through past federal landmark legislation on voting rights.
After all, there are people under 18, non-citizens, and people with a criminal justice record who pay taxes and own property but do not meet the other requirements to vote — yet, they are still disqualified from registering.
U.S. Federal Constitutional Amendments on Voting Rights
15th Amendment (1870) — prohibited denying the vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude; directly addressed the post-Civil War exclusion of Black men
19th Amendment (1920) — prohibited denying the vote based on sex; extended suffrage to women after decades of organized advocacy
24th Amendment (1964) — abolished poll taxes in federal elections, removing an economic barrier that functionally excluded poor voters regardless of race
26th Amendment (1971) — lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, largely in response to the argument that those eligible for the military draft deserved electoral representation
Though not a constitutional amendment, the Voting Rights Act (1965) prohibited discriminatory voting practices, particularly literacy tests and other mechanisms used to disenfranchise Black voters in the South; it is considered the most significant voting rights legislation since Reconstruction. This legislation also further reinforced these protections in the amendments listed above.
What would most weaken the ruling?
Eligibility Mismatch: Corporations cannot meet the eligibility criteria that any human voter must satisfy.
A corporation that has been operating for 5 years can register and cast a ballot, but a 14-year-old high school freshman cannot even pre-register to vote and cannot legally cast a ballot.
A corporation does not have citizenship as a human does.
Following the ruling’s own logic to its next step, a foreign-owned LLC that holds property in Fenwick Island would qualify to register to vote and cast a ballot in local elections, as well as an LLC owned by someone under the age of 18, non-citizens, and individuals who cannot register to vote due to their criminal justice record.
The Reading of the “Free and Equal” Clause is too narrow: The judge’s interpretation that the town charter complies with the “Free and Equal” clause does not consider electoral equality, but instead, focuses on being free from fraud, absent racial or other recognized forms of discrimination.
Electoral equality is foundational to democratic governance. A voter’s ballot matters as much as another’s ballot, regardless of their race, age, gender, socioeconomic class, disability, veteran status, native-born citizenship vs. naturalized citizenship, etc.
The judge did not resolve whether the introduction of non-human voters into the electorate leaves human voters with genuinely equal standing.
Judicial restraint is a legal philosophy where judges limit their own power by strictly interpreting the law in the case as presented, resulting in a ruling being appropriately narrow. However, there are instances where this can create a ruling containing an unexamined foundational assumption as applicable as established above in the “Identify the core flaw in the ruling” section.
Upon inspection of the voter registration form, entities may only register as a non-resident property owner.
Based on deductive reasoning, you may only register as a private individual voter if you live in Fenwick Island and also operate an entity.
This creates two distinguishable classes where entities operated by non-residents have the ability to cast a ballot on behalf of the entity and entities operated by residents do not, meaning one group has more tools to influence governance than the other.
Additionally, there is no limit to how many corporations a person can start or be part of, meaning that a person could directly influence numerous ballots on behalf of a corporation.
Governance has always affected people who cannot vote (children, non-citizens, and individuals excluded due to felony convictions), yet their inability to vote has never been treated as a structural flaw requiring correction through expanded eligibility. The ruling never addresses why a corporation’s stake in governance is more deserving of a ballot than theirs.
The ruling essentially creates new standards:
One vote, one human voice, one or more non-human voice(s)
One vote, but not for citizens under 18, non-citizens, and those who cannot register to vote due to their criminal justice record.
What would most strengthen the ruling?
Historical Precedent for Voting Rights: Taxation and property ownership have historically served as justifications for voting rights. It is not surprising that taxation is a focus in the justification of voting rights and may resonate with some Americans. After all, one of the widely recognized reasons the U.S. sought its independence from the British was because of taxation without representation.
If taxation was a sufficient condition for voting rights, then that leaves the question open to whether the logic of the ruling extends voting rights to the other populations and entities that currently pay taxes but do not have voting rights (non-citizens, youth workers, 501(c)3 nonprofits which are exempt from federal income tax but pay other taxes, etc.).
The Fenwick Island ruling reintroduces property ownership as a sufficient condition for voting standing, and now extends it to non-human entities.
However, using property ownership to extend voting rights to a non-human entity conflicts with the more recent constitutional amendments that impact voting access (as established above).
Each amendment removed a condition that allowed the treatment of certain human populations as having less representational standing. Voter eligibility criteria have been progressively decoupled from property, wealth, and status and anchored instead in personhood and citizenship.
Absence of Other Avenues to Influence Governance: The strongest version of the ruling’s argument rests not on property ownership alone, but on the premise that representation should follow obligation and corporations do bear real tax obligations to local government. If voting were the only channel available to them, one could argue it should be accessible. But it isn’t.
Corporations and businesses have direct access to the regulatory process through lobbying, public comment periods, and filing amicus curiae briefs.
According to OpenSecrets, corporate and business-related political action committees (PACs) raised $756 million for political spending in 2024.
Corporations and business executives often move between corporate roles and roles of public trust, especially in regulatory agencies, and have an implicit interest in creating favorable conditions for the private industry.
Economic and political leverage are key tools corporations and businesses use to influence governance through choosing where to locate business operations and jobs.
In 2017-2018, Amazon held a highly publicized and competitive bidding war for its second headquarters, pitting cities against each other to see which could provide the most lucrative tax incentives. Arlington, VA, won by offering $573 million in direct cash grants and infrastructure investments, in exchange for the promise of 25,000 new jobs and increased tax revenue.
The Unresolved Paradox
The ruling creates a situation in which an entity can vote without meeting the conditions any human voter must meet. An entity’s vote is equal to a human voter’s vote.
Corporate personhood in commercial and speech contexts operates differently from voting rights. The question is whether voting rights (and potentially other rights) specifically have ever been understood to flow from the same source as commercial rights.
With the ruling in place, an entity gets to vote without being over 18, without U.S. citizenship, and without regard to their criminal justice record — and without being able to mark its own ballot, even with assistive tools. In Fenwick Island’s voter registration form, citizenship attestation and birth dates are required only for humans.
Still, one vote is one voice in an election.
Election results in the town of Fenwick Island, Delaware are a combination of votes from both human voters and non-human entity voters.
Corporations make up 12% of registered voters in the town of Fenwick Island, Delaware. Many local contests are decided by a small number of votes, meaning that elections in this jurisdiction could be decided by non-human entity voters. The right to a secret ballot makes this nearly impossible to know with certainty.
A democracy is designed by every voice that participates in its elections, whether that voice is human or not.
If entities can access rights guaranteed to humans without satisfying the criteria that humans must satisfy, what precedent does this create?
Should corporations be allowed to influence governance in the same ways a human voter can?
Jackie Wu is a former Community Outreach Manager at the Orange County Registrar of Voters, the fifth-largest voting jurisdiction in the United States. She is the author of On the Front Lines of Democracy: An Election Official’s Story of Protecting the Vote in 2020 and operates J Wu Consulting. Learn more at jwuconsulting.substack.com and jwuconsulting.com.