Iowa Representative Greg Heartsill (R-Chariton) has introduced HF 6, which deletes the state income tax check-off that benefits qualified parties. It lets taxpayers send $1.50 to the political party of the taxpayer’s choice. Checking the box does not increase the taxpayer’s tax payment.

On January 31, the bill passed a subcommittee of the House State Government. The vote was 2-1. The two Republicans voted for the bill; the one Democrat voted against it. If the bill passes, it takes it effect with 2017 tax returns. The Libertarian Party gained party status in November 2016 for the first time. It is not known if the motivation for the bill is to injure the Libertarian Party.

The last time a third party participated in the program was in 2002, when the Green Party was on the form. The Green Party received $3,210 during 2003 (from 2002 tax returns); Democrats received $67,140 and Republicans $70,321 that year. Thanks to John Deeth for this news.

On January 31, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein filed their opening brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C., in Johnson v Commission on Presidential Debates, 16-7107. The issue is whether the federal antitrust laws cover general election presidential debates.

The brief says, “The District Court (which had ruled in favor of the Commission on Presidential Debates) cited Sheppard v Lee (9th circuit 1991) for the proposition that ‘neither the business of conducting the government nor the holding of a political office constitutes trade or commerce within the meaning of the Sherman Act. True enough, but beside the point. Campaigning for the presidency is neither the business of conducting government nor the holding of a political office. It is a private business undertaking…The District Court asserted that calling political activity a market place does not make it so. True. But the District Court’s ipse dixit denying that any politically connected activity can be a marketplace similarly doesn’t make it so. Political activity is a market place when it involves billions of dollars of commerce as alleged in the Complaint…Suppose a presidential candidate sold $100 million worth of ‘Make America Great’ caps to promote his candidacy. It would be illogical to deny that such commerce did not involve a marketplace for caps because a significant or exclusive motivation for the sales was political.”

“The multibillion dollar business of campaigning for the presidency implicates an obvious marketplace: the selling of candidate ideas and characteristics to voters…The buyers in the marketplace respond with campaign donations, endorsements, volunteer work, election-day votes, or all of the above.”

The brief makes an analogy between the newspaper business, which is clearly covered by the anti-trust laws, and campaigning.

The Pennsylvania ban on out-of-state circulators for general election petitions has already been struck down. Trent Pool, a professional petitioner who lives in Texas, has his own lawsuit, trying to strike down the Pennsylvania ban for primary petitions. All the briefs have been filed as of January 26, 2017. The case is Benezet Consulting v Cortes, 1:16cv-74.

The state is trying to defend its ban by saying it is only protecting the interests of the two parties that hold primaries in Pennsylvania, the Republican and Democratic Parties. But Pool counters that by showing that the major parties have no bylaws banning out-of-state circulators from circulating primary petitions, nor have they intervened in this lawsuit. Furthermore, as Pool points out, he is a member of the Texas Republican Party, and therefore it is nonsense for the state to claim that if he had been allowed last year to circulate a petition to get Rand Paul on the Republican presidential primary ballot, he would have been “raiding” the Republican Party.