(Radio Ipwa) – The Iowa Supreme Court is expected to rule today (Wednesday) on an appeal from Libertarian congressional candidates seeking to have their names printed on General Election ballots. Two weeks ago, the State Objection Panel kicked Libertarians running in the first, third and fourth congressional districts off the ballot after Republicans pointed out the Libertarian Party failed to follow state law and held its caucuses and county conventions on the same day.

Yesterday (Tuesday), during a hearing in Des Moines, the justices on the Iowa Supreme Court asked pointed questions of attorneys for both sides in the case. Chief Justice Susan Christensen called it a “kind of ticky tack” violation, but she asked an attorney for the Libertarians why the law shouldn’t be enforced.  “I don’t think it’s as obtrusive to require strict compliance before an election,” she said. “Get your ducks in a row.” Justice Dana Oxley asked a follow up.

“If everyone in the party agrees that, ‘We’re just going to ignore all the rules in the statute,’ then no one can challenge that?” she asked. Justice Christopher McDonald outlined his biggest concern with the Libertarians’ position.  “You could have under your argument, I think, complete non-compliance,” McDonald said. “I mean if the party didn’t have a precinct caucus or a county convention and they didn’t have delegates and they didn’t file any paperwork with the county auditors and they just said they had a state convention — maybe they did, maybe they didn’t…that would be OK.”

Later, as other attorneys were arguing the Libertarians didn’t qualify for the ballot, Justice McDonald noted the issue wouldn’t be before the court if Libertarians had waited 181 minutes and started their county conventions after midnight. “Why should we care if there’s no contest as to who the actual delegates are and there’s no contest that they would have had legal authority…to vote…if they had waited a sufficient amount of time?” McDonald said. “It seems like the case law is pretty clear that we’re not going to allow these kind of collateral challenges.”

Justice Oxley asked a similar question of an attorney asking the court to uphold the decision to keep the Libertarians’ names off the ballot. “Why is the remedy for the fact that they held the county convention three hours early nullification of everything that happened?” Oxley asked. At the end of the hearing, Justice Edward Mansfield said the Republicans who objected to having Libertarians run in three Iowa congressional districts did so for a reason. “They view having the candidacies on the ballot as an injury to the candidates they’ve nominated,” Waterman said.

The Libertarian candidates say they will run write-in campaigns if their names are not printed on ballots in the first, third and fourth congressional districts.