The fight for corporate suffrage continues.
At long last, we've received a response from the County Registrar here in Los Angeles regarding our application to vote. Here is the majority of the letter:
While it might seem disheartening that they have rejected our application, and even a little terse where they describe our application as “violating... basic criteria,” (emphasis added) the truth is that this is a big victory for the cause of corporate personhood because of the framework that it establishes. It’s worth celebrating that we have not been rejected for being inhuman, nor for being superhuman. We were not disqualified because we were a business. The “basic” criteria listed make no reference to a requirement of individual, biological human status. The criteria we failed to meet described only necessary “citizenship” and “18 years of age.”
So we can safely assume the County Recorder did not reject our application on prejudice or principle, but instead they have only made some kind of clerical error in interpreting our Articles of Incorporation...
Is Farmscape a citizen?
Yes. Obviously. Each member of Farmscape’s staff, board, and equity structure is a citizen. Moreover, we have standing Supreme Court precedent declaring that:
... a corporation created by and doing business in a particular state, is to be deemed to all intents and purposes as a person, although an artificial person, an inhabitant of the same state, for the purposes of its incorporation, capable of being treated as a citizen of that state, as much as a natural person.
This comes from
the majority in Louisville, C. & C.R. Co. v. Letson, 43 U.S. 497 (1844). Thus it’s clear that Farmscape itself is a citizen, even disregarding the citizenship of its staff and membership. If you want to dive deeper into corporate personality and the law, you might start with Wikipedia’s page on
corporate citizenship.
Is Farmscape eighteen years of age?
Yes. Obviously. Again, each member of Farmscape’s staff, board, and equity table is older than eighteen human years. And again, the organization itself is also eighteen -- at least in corporate years.
Although Farmscape is what the courts call an “artificial person” instead of a biological human, we can still safely call it eighteen years old, for purposes of civic participation. Farmscape is officially not yet four years-old in human reckoning, but artificial persons do not age at the same rate as regular persons, just as dogs
do not age at the same rate as humans:
When companies advertise their competence to a prospective client, they often allude to the “collective years of experience” the staff has doing what they do. Farmscape submitted this same explanation for its age in the addendum to its voter registration form, reporting that our staff’s total years of service at Farmscape exceeded eighteen years. This is a reasonable and customary way to calculate the age of a corporation or any other organization, which by its nature clearly matures at a different rate than a biological person. Here is a chart of Farmscape’s human age equivalent, based upon the collective-time-served principle:
You'll see from this graph we should be eligible to run for president by the end of July 2013, which will be an exciting milestone to cross at thirty-five corporate years-old.
What's next in the race for mayor? From here, we will need to appeal the County Recorder’s decision because it is clear they have misunderstood our identity documents. Please tell us if you know a good elections attorney who might give us a hand.
In follow-up to Beutner's exit from the campaign to be Los Angeles' next mayor, the LA Times