On September 16, the Tea Party Leadership Fund asked the Federal Election Commission to grant an exemption, so that the Fund would not need to disclose the names of people who contribute to the Fund. Here is the 13-page request from the Fund.

The letter says “The TEA Party is not a political party as defined by FECA because it does not nominate candidates to federal office.” It also says, “The TEA Party and its supporters are political outsiders untethered to – and often at odds with – both major political parties.” That sentence is likely to draw skepticism.

The request is based on the U.S. Supreme Court decisions that exempted the NAACP from disclosing its membership to certain southern state governments in the 1950’s, and the U.S. Supreme Court 1982 decision that exempted the Socialist Workers Party from disclosing its contributors and also its expenditures. Lower courts have granted similar exemptions to the Communist, Socialist Action, and Freedom Socialist Parties.

Page nine lists instances of government harassment of the TEA Party, and page ten describes examples of private harassment against the TEA Party. Page eleven then lists many instances when certain members of Congress made very hostile statements about the TEA Party. The request explains that the U.S. Supreme Court decision concerning the Socialist Workers Party said that groups making exemptions can use evidence that concerns similar groups, not just the group that is seeking the exemption.

The request does not present evidence that government agents infiltrated the Fund, or any other TEA Party. By contrast, the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party were able to prove that many government employees had infiltrated those parties, especially FBI agents.

On September 17, the Texas NAACP and the Mexican American Caucus of the Texas House filed a new lawsuit against the 2011 law that requires voters at the polls to show one of six types of government photo-ID. The 2011 law still hasn’t been implemented.

The new lawsuit is Texas State Conference of NAACP v Steen, in the Southern District, Corpus Christi Division. This case will almost surely be combined with the lawsuit filed by the federal government in August against the same law, which is called U.S.A. v State of Texas. Here is the complaint in the new case. It argues that the law violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

As reported earlier, Gary Johnson and James Gray, the 2012 Libertarian national ticket, sued the Commission on Presidential Debates last year. The CPD rules say that anyone who is on the ballot in states containing a majority of electoral college votes, and who is at 15% in three national polls, may be included in the general election presidential debates.

Last year, several polls were commissioned in which the respondents were asked whether they prefer President Obama, or Gary Johnson. No other candidates were mentioned. The results of all three polls showed Johnson far above 15%. The results of these polls were presented to the Commission on Presidential Debates, but the Commission ignored them and did not invite Johnson or Gray into the debates.

The lawsuit is still alive. On September 4, both sides presented a joint report to U.S. District Court Judge Fernando Olguin, over whether the Johnson campaign is entitled to engage in discovery. The Johnson campaign seeks to learn the manner in which the criteria for debate inclusion were set, a history of any changes in the criteria, and information about communications between the Commission and the major party national committees. Defendants want the case dismissed without having permitted any discovery. Probably the next event in this lawsuit will be a ruling from the Judge over whether discovery may go forward. The case is Johnson v Commission on Presidential Debates, central district of California, 8:12-cv-1600.