Voting Rights

I was talking with an employee earlier today about the decline of the inner city and we stumbled upon an interesting idea. What if, everyone that paid taxes and/or owned a business, or maybe even the LLC's themselves, that reside within a city, was able to cast a vote in the municipal elections? It would completely do away with these corrupt hell-holes like Baltimore where you wind up with a bunch of idiots being elected by the poor bastards that cannot afford to move out of the town, that subsequently flush the city down the toilet.

 

Other than the LLCs, what's new/unusual about that?

Edit: nevermind. Sounds like you're making the assumption that they don't live in the city where they work/own a business, right?

 

"were".
You mean, return to the original rules of the country, right?
Maybe check the googles. Bannon and a bunch of other "patriots" have said the same thing. Maybe you guys can start a movement.

 

Nothing stopping business owners from moving to the inner city and voting/working to make it better.

 

Yes. The assumption is that even if you don't live in a city, you would still be able to vote if you have a certain level of vested interest in the city politics, primarily owning a business or working and paying a payroll tax to that city.

 

I get your point to a point, but the flip side to that coin would be to open up shop in a different area run more in alignment with your beliefs as a business owner. Why provide more tax revenue to help fund something you feel that strongly against?

 

Except getting your house broken into, getting robbed, killed, etc. Lots of these cities (we were discussing the St Louis Metro in particular) are zoned in such a way that the only residential areas are complete ghetto, yet thousands of people and millions (if not billions) of dollars of business/taxes flow through them.

 

In your scenario, does the business owner get to vote where the poor people live, AND where he lives?

 

Hmmmm

 

St Louis is a weird animal, St Louis proper it tiny but you still have the central west end, south st louis ect which aren't that bad. Funny, a buddy of mine found a 1920's 4 bedroom 3 and 1/2 bath in north st louis, while it was a shit hole it was all there, original woodwork, 3 ornate fireplaces, etc. It would have taken at least 100k in renovations but between federal, state, and city programs they would have covered 60%. But it was gun and knife club for sure.

That said, I get what you're saying. I'd think you should maybe get something especially if you're paying the city tax.

 

Yeah, but only on municipal issues. He doesn't get two votes for president, governor, senator, etc.

 

And to add to this - what about a multi-business owner or someone with a structure, like say an S-Corp with multiple LLCs tucked underneath? Do they get a vote for every registered business?

 

What's the rationale for getting a municipal vote but not a congressional vote?

 

Dammit, I don't know. I didn't write a thesis on this. It's just a spark at this point. We're supposed to be hashing the details out among ourselves. Once we get everything lined out, we'll add it to the long list of world problems solved by the WERA BBS.

 

Well, it looks like I've put more thought into it in a few minutes than you did. I apologize.

 

Probably so. The "earlier today" I put in my original post was like five minutes after finishing the conversation. I talked to the guy, did something else for a minute, and when I started thinking about the conversation I thought to myself, "this needs to be in the WERA dungeon". So here we are

 

For $300 a pop, I can set up as many companies as I'd like in TN, in really any municipality if I set up PO Boxes and addresses of record. And I can replicate it in any state. The point is, this would be a really simple way to buy elections if it were done on a per-organization basis.

I totally get the intent, and I often side with people who have more skin in the game, but I don't see this working out well.

 

And you've got a lot of places that have a massive business presence (aerospace, banking, pharma) but virtually nobody that works there lives there.

 

My thinking is something along the lines of Citizens United. Yes, with no oversight it would be REALLY easy to game the system, but it already is. I'd think it would need to be linked to a realistically revamped voter id/registration system to work.

 

Something's got to be done, that poor town is dying.