On August 30, the Iowa voters who challenged the Libertarian Party’s spot on the November ballot filed a lawsuit against the Secretary of State, and asked a lower state court judge to remove Gary Johnson from the ballot. They were joined by one of the Iowa Republican Party candidates for presidential elector. The hearing is August 31 at 9 a.m., so close in time to when the case was filed that it is impossible for the Libertarian Party’s attorney to attend.

The objectors’ brief says if Johnson is left on the ballot, that will cause “irreparable harm to other candidates and political parites who must compete against him”, and leaving him on the ballot would also cause “irreparable injury to the voting public because it could improperly impact the election.”

How far the United States has come from the old understanding that the right to vote includes the right of choice for whom to vote. That was implicit at the time of the founding fathers, when there was no mechanism for government to prevent voters from voting for anyone they wished. Increasingly, many in the elite think of ordinary voters as lesser beings who are not to be trusted to act outside of carefully arranged choices.