You would think this is The Onion again, or at least an exaggeration. But no, the judge literally invokes a movie villain robot that wanted to kill all the crew in a ship as an example of what should be allowed to vote.

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.

[…]

Karsnitz said he appreciated that the ACLU of Delaware might disagree with ​corporate voting. “Visions ⁠of faceless large corporations or even HAL controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction,” he wrote, referring to the computer at the center of the film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” “However, plaintiff has not demonstrated ⁠that this ​policy violates the principle of one person/entity/one vote.”

If I understand correctly, a Delaware corporation now is legally allowed to register swarms of robots to vote, because this judge thinks it doesn’t violate a “principle” of one entity, one vote. The judge offers us zero reason why we can’t register 100,000 corporate entities, each fronted by a software agent, each casting one vote (HAL was software in a datacenter, not even mobile). How many entities can a single attorney-in-fact serve? That is the simple move being left wide open.

This sloppy AI slope undermining elections in America is already real. In Newark in 2019 a single developer voted 31 times on behalf of his many LLCs, which led officials to ban voting by artificial entities there. Delaware has roughly 2 million entities to 1 million people. And it already swings races: in 2024 the votes cast by artificial entities in Fenwick Island exceeded the margin between the winner and the top losing candidate.

Just fractionalize one parcel into 100,000 ownership slices held by 100,000 anonymously-filed Delaware LLCs, each with a power of attorney, each a non-human identity casting one ballot. This isn’t even hard to do anymore. And what if that corporation exists merely to sell its war chest of vote-eligible entities? Elections become “property sale” for profit and power, which sure sounds a lot like early American slavery auctions!