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Welcome to Iowa Law Talk on KXEL, that mighty.
50,000 watt blowtorch the first 50,000 watt clear channel broadcast in North America over a century ago right out of this Waterloo Cedar Rapids area and Iowa Law Talk with Messers Joseph Piper J.D.
Esquire and Nicholas Cratelli J.D.
Esquire here on 1540 and 100.5 FM you can listen live
just get your browser type in listen live kxel and guys and gals you can write in with questions we've got a couple uh iowa law talk at kxel.com it's been beautiful autumnal weather gentlemen we are one week away from the reversion back from daylight savings time to uh central standard time
And after Halloween night, it will start to have a sunset at 5.30.
So change of season.
We know the election is coming up.
We've got a couple of questions for our group today.
Nick and Joe, are you ready to field a couple of questions?
Bring them on.
All right.
Question one, the Iowa Supreme Court recently upheld the removal of Scott Belt.
as a Potawatomi County supervisor based on allegations of intoxication at a public meeting in 2025.
Bilt had questioned the legality of his removal based on a single incident among other factors.
So a single incident involves.
What is the responsibility of a body seeking punitive action?
Isn't it possible that a person
could appear to be intoxicated when suffering an adverse reaction to drugs or because of some other medical condition.
Shouldn't efforts be made to make sure of what the condition was and that it did impair the official's ability to serve?
That is question number one.
Nick Cratelli, Joe Piper.
You guys are law wizards.
I believe this has been litigated and has some public record to it.
Nick, I'll start off with you.
Well, I think the question is very good because it asks what you can make an allegation, but at some point in time you have to prove the truth of the allegation.
Now, this results in two additional questions.
Who's going to be the decider of the truth and what are they going to base their decision on?
So,
Because Mr. Belt had some opponents who were claiming that he was intoxicated and they, you know, apparently were able to cause a petition for removal under a state statute to be filed.
Well, that's an allegation.
That's a claim.
At some point, John, you've got to prove the truth of it, okay?
And some judge has to decide whether the allegations are true.
So your readers or your listeners correct.
There could be a variety of different things.
It could be number one, he was not intoxicated.
Or number two, he was under the influence of medication.
Or number three, it was a one-off situation, a variety of different aspects.
But the question is, who's going to decide that?
And what is the process that they have to go through to get to that decision?
Remember, people, when you talk about the law, process is king.
It's the process that counts.
So in this case, I went back and I took another look at the 28-page decision in the belt case to see exactly what the process was that was used to trigger the removal statute under Iowa Code.
And it turns out there was at least a two-day trial with several witnesses that were called.
The person, an entity that was trying to get him removed called a number of witnesses, Mr. Belt.
attended, according to the opinion, the first trial, but did not attend the second.
Now, I don't know if that's significant or not, but it was certainly significant or not that it was mentioned in the opinion, John.
He may have had some very good reason for not being there, but that didn't make the opinion.
If the opinion
goes
on for 28 pages of how the court looked at what the proof was,
to determine whether he was intoxicated and whether or not the burden of the state statute had been met, and it was.
So if you're looking at the belt case with respect to due process, was Mr. Belt given due process, 28-page opinion, very detailed, looks to me like he was.
I agree.
So he was not just removed on a mere allegation or an assertion, there was a full-blown two-day trial on this.
Joe?
Yeah.
And I look at that, and it makes me think about it.
You've got many witnesses there, and then there are five witnesses that are speaking to their encounters with him.
And the court found the people that were saying he was intoxicated to be more credible.
And then they looked at the state statute.
There's a state statute involved here, too, that the court had to look at.
And when it looked at that statute,
The statute's pretty clear that they have the right to remove and remember the board of supervisors if they're trying to find it right now.
So I have it in front of me here.
But they have a standard review.
The court did a thorough analysis of it.
And looking at that,
the Supreme Court looked at this and said, hey, you've got audio and video recordings of him.
And they depict his intoxication.
They are threatened.
He threatened to assault somebody who was swearing at fellow board members, slurring his weak words and incoherently rambling.
And this was all during somebody else's presentation.
And then they did take him, you know, he was taken off.
They also said that the state was not required to prove the belt was acting in his official capacity at the town hall meeting.
So, and the code says any appointed for elective officer, uh, holding any public office in the state or in any division of municipality may be removed from office by the district court for any of the following reasons.
Number one, willful or habitual neglect or refusal to reform the duties of the office.
for willful misconduct or maladministration in office, for corruption, for extortion, for conviction of felony, for intoxication, or upon conviction of being intoxicated, for conviction of violating revisions of another chapter.
So we're down to the point where they're saying, for intoxication.
So then the question would seem to arise, was he intoxicated?
Wasn't he?
And that's the question, but the statute's pretty clear.
The district court has to hear the case.
They had two days of listening to it, and the state puts up its witnesses and puts up his own witnesses to say, not intoxicated.
That's really the question here.
All right.
Well, thank you, gentlemen.
That's question number one that has come through.
We have another question.
We can encourage all of our listeners to write us
Ask Joe and ask Nick.
Your question is very easy.
Just email Iowa Law Talk at kxel.com.
The second question is, quote, I've been hearing a lot of horror stories about parents requesting knowledge about school curriculums.
and being told by school boards that they did not have the right to see curriculums.
Since schools, at least public schools, are tax-supported and have government involvement, why can't parents seek any information they want under the Freedom of Information Act?
I'll start with Joe this time if he wants to jump in, and then Nick or...
Flip it however you guys want.
A different subject matter, but an interesting question.
I don't understand why a parent doesn't have a right to see what the curriculum is that they're going to be teaching their children.
And candidly, perhaps me now as a grandparent has a right to see the curriculum, but much more so the parent or guardian of a student.
I don't understand how you can say there's no right for them not to be able to see the curriculum.
Joe Piper, attorney at law, ladies and gentlemen, just so that you can distinguish the voices here as we're listening on radio, you just heard from Joe Piper, Joe with his great ag and business solutions, an uncommon law firm.
And next we'll hear from Nick Critelli.
Fair question, Nick, on school curricula.
OK, well, this one bothers me.
All right.
Now, if we're full disclosure, OK.
We're parochial school people.
All of my children have gone to parochial schools.
That does not mean and do not take that disclosure to mean that I am anti-public school.
I'm not.
So my comments, folks, are going to be related to not only public schools, but also parochial schools, private schools, anything along that line.
I want to know what's being taught to my kid.
As a parent, I think I have a natural right
To know that now I may not have a right to interfere Okay with with whatever system my child is in but I certainly have a right to know what's going on I believe John that that right is heightened when the system is a government system simply because It's my taxpayer money that's funding it.
It's my vote that puts the supervisors in position So I think I have a right to know that now a curriculum is not
protected by any kind of privilege.
It's not secret, okay?
It's what the product is that our school system, public or parochial, is providing our children.
And I think as with any transaction, I have a right to know what the product is.
So your consumer, your children are the consumers of the education being provided by the school.
And so as a consumer,
then you're in a position, if you can see the curriculum and you don't like it, to vote with your feet and move your child to a different place that has a curriculum more suited to you, correct?
Correct.
And without access to that information, I can't exercise that right.
But Joe, for the last maybe a decade and a half, if not two decades, we've had a tension between
the government with respect to the child and the parents with respect to the child.
Who controls the child?
Is it the parents or is it, you know, the school, the government?
Well, this causes nothing but trouble both ways because some elements within the system will say that is the school's business.
That's what they're to do and they take care of the child as does the parent.
They will look at the parent and say, you know, you want control over everything unless there's liability to you, unless that child does something that you don't like causes harm to somebody else and then you don't want to be responsible for not keeping your kid under control.
And I've heard that argument made.
So there's a tension between the two roles of government and parents.
with respect to how you deal with the kids.
To really make matters complex is when you run into grandparents that disagree.
And of course the courts generally will say that the parents have the predominant control over the child.
But this has been a common battleground.
But the way this particular question was phrased, do I have access to information on the curriculum?
You should have, and I don't see why a FOIA request would not apply.
Now, maybe there's some, you know, arcane law that I'm not aware of, but right off the top, my head looks to me that parents entitled to know that.
Now, we have to give you a disclaimer.
This is not legal advice.
We've not researched it.
Okay, this is not a legal opinion.
You can't sue us if it's wrong.
You know, everything's got to come to the warning these days, John.
Yeah, but I'm just giving it my personal opinion
You know, it's interesting is as some of you know, I teach collegiate courses.
I'm teaching sixth as we speak and I'm teaching at a private college outside the Kansas City metro area and We're totally transparent.
I have to publish and post a syllabus
I have to show week by week assignments.
I have to show the subject matters of those assignments week by week the materials week by week my grading system my grading point allocation the dates and times of testing accommodations for said testing and expectations you know artificial intelligence have to you know talk about
adapting to that.
And I believe in higher education, as I say, even in what I would call NAIA schools, even if they're not regents schools, I find there's a huge amount of transparency.
So it appears to me that this is what higher the upper echelons of education are doing, that this is something that we could certainly emulate.
at the high school, senior high school, junior high school, intermediate grade school levels.
Joe, any particular thoughts?
I think having the transparency would be very good.
Who loses if there's transparency?
I don't see a loss.
Right.
Well,
there's a fear, Joe.
Not necessarily a loss, but a fear.
And the fear is intervention and controversy by the parents.
who will come in and say, I don't like this curriculum.
It violates this, that, or the other thing, or I don't want my child exposed to that.
Okay, whether you call it a form of censorship or filtering or whatever.
And to avoid that controversy, you simply say our curriculum is not open for public inspection.
And you say, I'm not the public.
I'm the guardian of my child.
I need to know what you're showing
them.
Yeah, I think I'm in agreement on that and you know, to
say that you're entitled to pull a curtain over the discussion and over the curriculum and say it's not public, deprives the parent or guardian of the student of the right to make an informed decision as to what is going to be placed and presented to their children.
And in the very form of the stages, especially if you're in
grade school, middle school, high school, you're forming a lot of who that person's going to become and what they're going to believe moving forward.
And I don't believe that it's appropriate to hike the ball and say, trust us.
Okay.
I agree with you.
But for one, with one exception, I do believe the parent has the right to know what's being taught to the kid, the curricular.
Okay.
Whether or not that parent has the right to go in there and say don't do this Don't teach that that's the that's the business of this the business of the school district But I do have a right to say I don't like what you were doing.
I'm pulling my kid I think a lot of time the confusion comes in as the parent doesn't want to pull the kid because it's free Right, and it's paying you tuition.
Okay, but they want a right to control the curriculum
Right.
You know, as a pro-kill parent, I still pay taxes for a seat at a public school that we've never used.
Okay.
I want to pay them when they put the kids in a place where I can have input or whatever it is.
But that doesn't mean I'm not going to continue to pay my taxes so your child in a public system can get that product.
I think the
problem here is where the parent goes in there and tries to control what the curriculum is.
Yeah.
Well, Nick, in light of the
tuition vouchers that are in place in Iowa.
I think that eliminates that because I can now move my child to another school and have the tuition voucher go.
And we've seen a lot of people moving away from some of the public schools into private schools, where they trust the curriculum more.
So I think we eliminate that thing of saying, you know, the money follows the student, whether it's in a procured school,
or it's in a public school.
So that's a pro-choice argument, okay?
I have the right to choose, okay, on a variety of different things.
We don't want to go down that rabbit hole, but why don't I have the right to choose on the education?
You do, but to make it an informed choice, I gotta know what the curriculum is.
Well, while we're on this education topic, I mean, minding of my days as vice chair,
of the oversight committee in the Iowa legislature in the Iowa House where we were presented with various anecdotes of student complaints with respect to the region's universities.
Especially I would whittle these down for purposes of brevity into free speech complaints.
We had one at the University of Iowa involving the dental school
We had one up at Northern Iowa involving a free market enterprise group being recognized on campus.
We had one at Iowa State in Ames that revolved around a teacher basically indicating that students of two certain ideologies that that professor did not want them in the class.
I'm reminded, because I know you two gentlemen are very good, Kastusha Law purveyors, that we have a landmark case from Iowa itself, the Tinker case, that kind of is a bellwether of how we approach.
some of these free speech issues in education.
Nick, Joe, would you like to talk about Tinker and how that might apply even as we examine free speech rights at our state universities, private universities, and school systems at the high school and grade school, middle school level?
You're thinking Tinker versus Des Moines, correct?
I am.
I am.
It's interesting because Supreme Court
In 1969, he held that neither the students nor faculty shared their constitutional right to freedom of speech when they go into the school building.
I don't remember exactly what they were talking about, what they were trying to...
If I remember, it was the Vietnam War protests.
I believe they were wearing t-shirts to class that were in opposition to Vietnam War, if I remember that correctly.
I'm pretty sure I'm right about that.
That does sound right now.
And I think we now have
a section 1983 action for even attaching potential personal liability to state actors that are in violation of those free speech rights.
Nick, that seems to me that we still take free speech very seriously.
And would that be a 14th Amendment issue or is that just directly a federal codification of statute that Congress passed?
Well, Section 1983 is a civil cause of action against
the
governor for depriving you of your constitutional rights.
In other words, what we found is that there's two ways you control people's behavior.
You arrest them, or you sue them.
You either let go of a body of law enforcement that goes out there and rounds them up and does law enforcement stuff to them, or you let loose a horde of lawyers that goes after them and sue them.
In 1983 is that.
It's stewing the government for violating your rights.
And it's a very, very powerful right that you have.
In fact, it's one of those rights that does keep government under control.
So when government violates your constitutional rights, it could be sued.
And they don't like that to get hauled into a federal court because it's a federal statute dealing with that.
We've had a number of 1983 cases.
Tinker was a Polestar case in an American First Amendment law because it dealt with the right of students to protest and basically to express their opinions at that time.
A colleague of mine, Dan Johnston, at the time represented Tinker at the Supreme Court.
We were in law school about the same time.
Keep in mind what was going on at that time, folks.
This was the very beginning
of the protests that we experienced now routinely.
It was not routine at the time.
What we were dealing with is the protests against the Vietnam War.
Remember the chant?
You guys are too young to remember this.
Elle, no, we won't go.
Oh, yes, I remember it well.
And before we go further, Nick, we'll be right into this.
We got to remind you we're on Iowa Law Talk on KXEL 1540 AM and 100.5 FM.
Piper,
perfection!
Well,
wait a
minute.
The FCC loves Joe Piper.
Back to Nick.
Tinker versus Des Moines is a United States Supreme Court case.
It didn't just stop at the Iowa Supreme Court.
It went all the way up.
And the students plan to wear black armbands at school as a silent protest against the Vietnam War.
So let's set the stage here before Nick.
uh, puts it out now.
Who was Mr. Tinker?
Who was
Garland Joe?
Is, flags were being burned.
Draft cards were being burned.
Okay.
I remember a young guy that got out of law school, uh, about a year or two behind me at this point, and for, got caught up in the protest, whipped out his draft card, burnt it, and promptly got arrested.
Now, and there went his law degree, you know, federal charges, all that.
So you can imagine.
Uh,
People were dishonoring flags.
So put yourself back into the in the 1960s in that culture and you see the fervor that was going on, which quite frankly, folks, is not much different than what it is today.
You had high profile protesters like the Barragan Brothers.
You had the New York Times Pentagon Papers case.
The whole milieu was.
So
what was the 1968 Democratic Convention?
So what was going on at the time was an organization called the SDS, Students for Democratic Society.
Now, today you could look at that and go, that was a Marxist group.
Well, okay, but they were college kids, mainly political science majors.
They weren't economic major, they were polycyte people.
So the SDS was really big at this point.
And that Tinker case brought a lot of that out.
The SDS didn't go away, okay?
There was conventions later on as to how to deal with all the protests.
And the operating theory was that you go underground and infiltrate the universities, particularly education and law.
Go read a book called The American Cultural Revolution by Christopher Rufo.
published two or three years ago.
It explains all of this.
When I was reading that book, it was like a trip down memory lane.
I remember this and I can tell you their names and what they look like.
But the SDS was alive and well at that time and they're now seeing the end result of it.
Tinker was good because it does allow people First Amendment protection.
At that point in time, First Amendment litigation was big.
Remember the seven dirty words by George Carlin?
Remember well,
okay Carl was a comedian and he made a whole comedian Presentation based upon the seven dirty words that the FCC forbid you to say and this went up to the US Supreme Court in a case called FCC versus Pacifica Okay, where the right of commercial speech was given First Amendment protection Prior to that time based on tinker the speech was political
Carlin extended it to commercial speech.
So what was the end result of all that?
Porn.
This is why porn as an expression of commercial speech is allowed.
So all of these cases, folks, that we talk about have long range effects.
Far beyond what the people think about at the time.
So today you take a look at Tinker, which forms the basis for Harlem, which forms the basis for New York Times versus Sullivan that we talked about last week, okay?
They all have, you know, they're all very important and they're all linked.
But they're all based on one thing, and that is we have a freedom in this country to speak.
But as we know, all freedoms have to be exercised responsibly.
We don't have a right to free speech.
Okay, we have a freedom.
That's a great distinction and Nick and Joe I would like you to kind of help elucidate This question about how the 14th amendment comes into play because the 14th amendment many of our salient rights under the Bill of Rights are
protected beyond Congress shall make no law it's now protected at the state level if a state actor abridges those rights to equal protection and due process there can be a 14th amendment suit beyond that of federal government transgressions is tinker something that would be
a 14th Amendment case because there were state actors involved or are there some statutes that don't even need state actors that are transgressions at the federal, national level without any state actors that are still protected, codified at law to preserve those rights under the Bill of Rights as well?
Well, John, it's a complex question and it's not that easily answered.
Okay.
First of all, you've got to understand
what the difference is between the 14th Amendment and the and the Bill of Rights to
the US
Constitution.
The right to free speech, the right to jury trial, the right to bear arms, the right to religion, freedom, all that.
All those rights are binding on the federal government.
Before the 14th Amendment, they were not binding on the states.
In
fact, if my memory serves me right, one state even had a state religion
at
one point.
Okay, so you're looking to go, how could that happen?
Or how about this, the 14th, go look up due process of law and you'll find out that doesn't exist in the Constitution, first ten amendments, because now you got equal protection on the law.
Is there a difference between the due process and equal protection?
Here are the numbers, folks, if you're interested in this.
Equal protection is the fifth amendment of the U.S.
Constitution.
Due process is the 14th amendment of the Constitution.
So you go, well, what the heck's the difference?
What are you talking about?
Two separate governments.
Two separate sovereign governments that are equal.
The states are not subservient to the federal government.
The federal government
OK, it's not superior to the state, but only as to those matters that the Constitution gives power to Congress.
All power comes from the Constitution, whether it's the power to the federal government or the power of the state.
So how does the federal government get the power then to say that state governments violate equal protection of the laws or state governments violate free speech?
because those rights were given to the federal government.
Congress shall not do this.
Congress, not the state, entered the 14th Amendment after the Civil War.
Okay, so now, Nick, why don't we read the 14th Amendment?
All persons born and naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and of the state where he shall reside shall not...
Any state shall not deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Right.
Now, what the US Supreme Court has said that the 14th Amendment incorporates all of the 10 amendments that are applicable to the federal government and puts them on the state.
It's called the Doctrine of Incorporation.
So that's how you grab the first tent or whatever and put it on the states, the Doctrine of Incorporation, so that they are essentially the same.
So if you've got the Doctrine of Incorporation working for you on the 14th Amendment and you have the Commerce Clause under Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution to regulate interstate commerce, which belongs to Congress, okay?
Then you can regulate a lot of behavior.
First of all, you can regulate civil rights.
And all of the civil rights regulation was based on the commerce clause initially.
This came out of the Heartland of America case, that restaurant case, where there was a restaurant located near a federal highway that would not serve minorities.
And they felt that that interfered with interstate commerce.
So that formed the basis for the Civil Rights Act.
I told you last time we had an arson case, a federal arson case, where the federal statute was based upon the fact that burning down a house could take it off of the electrical grid, which could interfere with interstate commerce.
They went a little too far on that one.
But you see the gains that get played here, how the federal government will creep in and get jurisdiction in what is traditionally a state stronghold.
Over the years, we've seen state power get less and less, get diminished.
But interestingly enough, Nick, we've got Proposition 9 out in California that says that any pig that's going to be sold in California has to have had a certain amount of space available to it.
And if you can't certify that, that pig can't be sold.
None of the pork products can be sold in California.
So then the pork producers took
the state of california to task on that signing the commerce clause and you're interfering with uh commerce unfortunately uh supreme court let that stand so now theoretically we could have 50 states defining how we should raise our pigs before they can be sold in their states
that's correct
they should have exercised the commerce clause and they chose not to
Okay, remember last time we talked about the expanding Constitution?
And this is where you get into the fight over Roe versus Wade in the Dobbs decision.
Roe versus Wade found a constitutional protected right of the right of privacy and it based the abortion decision on that.
We all knew that was a stretch too far.
Dobbs comes in and says, no, there's no such right.
That power belongs to the states.
Didn't say states couldn't do it.
They just said the power belongs to the state, not the federal government.
Okay, it goes back to what you're saying, same situation with California Prop 9.
That power belongs to the state.
What has occurred, Joe, is that the politicians take the power granted by Article 1, Section 8, the Commerce Clause, and they run with it.
They go too far.
And by the way, that happens all the time.
Because in a democracy, our representatives react to what the public wants.
If they want more regulation, they'll figure out a way to... Usually it's on the federal level, more so than the state.
We're starting to see some change in that, but that's just the nature of it.
As state power diminishes and federal power...
in larges, you'll see more and more of these cases.
The courts kind of strike a balance, and so no, that power belongs to the states to determine what the square footage is that a pig has to have.
Oh,
I understand anyhow.
It's an unabashedly state that I wish they hadn't done retracted the power of the federal government or by recognizing the California's power simply because an awful lot of my clients are farmers, and this is adversely impacting them all.
I'll be very clear.
The biggest problem we have is when we change the form of our government, go back to the way this government was originally constituted.
First of all, you had two governments working in tandem, state and federal.
The legislative branch, okay, the house was elected by everybody.
Everyone had a right to vote for the representative.
That was the body that represented the people of the United States.
The Senate,
wasn't represented by everybody.
The Senate was the body representing the states as sovereign governments.
So if you had 13 governments, you had 13 senators or whatever at the time.
They were elected by state legislators and their mission was to protect the power of the states so that the state could weigh in on what federal government was from a state's perspective.
Somewhere along the line was that the 17th or 13th amendment
that 1917, I think it's the 13th Amendment, where we changed that.
We said, we're just going to let the people elect the Senate.
But when you do it like we do now, when you do that, then the state as a sovereign government has no representative.
You're listening to Iowa Law Talk with Nick Cratelli and Joe Piper.
Joe Piper from his great enterprise there in my beloved hometown area of Hiawatha.
Marion C. Rapids, Ag and Business Legal Strategies, an uncommon law firm, Nick Critelli, the first American attorney in a century and a half to be given the vaunted honor of English Barrister.
Gentlemen, we've got enough time.
We've got one more question that came in.
Again, send your questions to Iowa Law Talk at kxl.com.
And this puts
extends into extra innings we've been discussing election law we have a question here quote one of the most troubling aspects of common election law is people going into facilities like nursing homes and filling out multiple ballots on behalf of people many of whom are not aware of what's going on or capable of voting
What is the solution to this?
What kind of measure should be taken to ensure that a person is capable of casting their own vote?
You know, as a former senior trust officer, I've always been worried about elder laws, senior abuse.
Is this a concern?
Joe and Nick, I'd love to hear your takes on this third question today on Iowa Law Talk with Critelli and Piper on KXEL.
Guys, we've got about seven more minutes.
You can riff.
Fascinating, because I'm thinking back to 2016, and it was the election between Trump and Hillary.
My father-in-law was living with us at the time.
I died in a world Democrat, and as we were going through his ballot, because he could barely read, his eyesight was so poor, he asked my wife to read the ballot to him, who was on it, and then
He asked questions.
We gave him the answers, and then he told us, vote for this one.
So my wife would fill it in.
And so he was voting absentee.
But he knew exactly what he wanted, who he wanted, and why he wanted them.
But to think about that, if my wife and I had not played it straight, he wouldn't have been able to read to see if we'd done it wrong.
So the opportunity for people to
go beyond what's right.
I mean, if the person's in there and they've got a conservative appointed or a guardian appointed because they can't manage their own affairs, do they have the competency to vote?
You know, if they've got Alzheimer's or dementia, I can see the potential for an abuse.
Now, the question is, how do you protect the election from people with stuff in the ballot box by going into the nursing homes?
and getting these people's votes.
I don't have a good solution.
Nick, maybe you do.
Well, this is the third rail of politics, guys.
We all know that.
Law must follow philosophy and facts.
So if we're having a law with respect to who can vote, you've got to look at the underlying philosophy as to what you want to honor and the facts that support it.
So let's go back to the beginning of the country who could vote John Who was the right of the franchise to vote given to
well was not given to women And also you had to own land in some of those colonies
you had to own land Okay, so the right to vote Was not universal Correct.
It didn't require whether you had a driver's license an ID or anything of this nature.
You had to have a deed
Okay, your own land, you got to write the vote.
And what was the reason for that?
Because you've got a stake in the outcome.
Yeah, it's a vested interest, basically.
You've got skin in the game, as we would say.
Skin in the game.
Yeah.
So if you look at that and say, well, where are we today?
Well, anyone can vote.
Well, what do you mean by anyone?
Any citizen?
Well, some people would say anybody, but right now most people, so we probably have to be a citizen.
You don't have to have any ownership or any skin in the game.
You just have to be here.
Okay?
Others will say, well, does it make any difference whether you're a citizen or not as long as you're here?
So we have a philosophical dispute over who should vote.
Until you get that philosophical dispute resolved, you can't move on to what the law should be.
I told you there were two elements to that.
The other one is facts.
Well, what are the facts?
Are people, like Joe described, voting that really don't know what they're doing?
Non-compass menace?
Should these people have a right to vote?
Should people in prison have a right to vote?
Should people that are unconscious have a right to vote?
I mean, so what are the facts of all this?
And right now, both the philosophy that underlies voting regulations is in the state of flux.
Okay, and the law is in a state of flux So you can't put together any meaning which is me the facts are in the state of flux You can't put together any meaningful rules and regulations with respect to it right now.
It's a mess It's a mess.
Okay You have to people are fighting over whether you have to have any ID to vote.
All right.
Well, what what's the purpose of the ID?
Okay, what is it to show that you are a citizen?
Okay, well, should we issue national ID cards?
I mean, you opened a huge can of worms here.
Okay, that wasn't even thought of when the Constitution was put together when they said you had to have a deed.
You know, guys, this has been such a great discussion today.
Three wonderful questions.
You know, at this election season, so many nasty ads on Tuesday evening.
of this week.
I had the opportunity to do a live restaurant show during primetime drive time in the Kansas City excerpts.
And I had spontaneously a candidate from one major party for United States Congress, a candidate from the opposing party for a state legislative race, sitting next to each other being interviewed together side by side.
on my show as moderator.
They were breaking bread together.
They were sharing common bonds of love for this country together.
It was very convivial.
It was such an edifying, edifying experience.
And I know that Iowa NICE still does prevail in certain quarters and I can prove it.
There has been statesmanship on both sides of the aisle and I couldn't both parties because we've seen
Some very sad news of a death in the family of Rob Sand and how all Iowans are uniting and rallying with prayers for the Sand family, as well as united in prayers and best wishes for our first dude, Kevin Reynolds, Governor Reynolds' husband, who now is having a recurrence of cancer, had brain cancer surgery the other day.
I think there's something still about Iowans
where there's an appeal to the better angels of our nature that we still occasionally respond to.
And that gives me hope, Joe Piper.
Yeah, it's fascinating.
I'm thinking about this and I'm also thinking I've got a brother who lives in a group home.
He's never asked about.
And then I was looking at the FAQs on the Secretary of State's website.
Can someone with a power of attorney sign a voter registration reform on a voter's behalf?
The answer is no.
However, if the voter is unable to sign
The voter can use a rubber stamp or a mark to sign.
The voter may also ask for assistance.
They have someone sign the form on the voter's behalf as long as it is done in the voter's presence and with the voter's permission.
Wow, that's a great hot take, Joe Piper.
So one of the things you think about here is what are the limits?
At least we have a lot of things spelled out in the FAQs, frequently asked questions.
And I'll thank Paul Payton, the Secretary of State, for having those FAQs up there to make it a little simpler.
Yes, exactly.
Nick, your final argument, you get the last word today on Iowa Law Talk with Cartelian Piper.
Okay, two things.
I'm getting sick and tired of these ads, as I think all of us are, but one thing I found common ground on.
between Republicans and Democrats.
And that is in order to run for office in the state of Iowa, for federal or state office, you have to be a liar, you have to be a cheat.
Okay, you really do, John, because if you're not a liar and you're not a cheat, you're not qualified to run for office.
Now I get this by watching both of their ads, because they say the same doggone thing about each other.
So I just assume that if you want to run for office, you got to be a liar and a cheat.
and that qualifies you to govern us.
Think about it.
Now, secondly, what the heck's going on here?
By education, not by training, I was a political scientist.
That was my undergraduate degree.
What can you do with a poly-side degree?
Go to law school, which is the path I chose, or you can run campaigns.
Influence elections.
Yeah.
So what you end up with, and what you are seeing, folks, is what I laughingly refer to as political science malpractice.
They get hooked up with a candidate, and they tell them how to run a campaign, the other side's a lion to cheat, or whatever it is, okay, or, or I better yet, a political action committee.
John, it's got all kinds of money that can pay you for your consulting fees.
So maybe if we licensed.
political, no, or political scientists, practicing political scientists, and we get to sue them for malpractice if they screw it up.
Now, for my closing remarks, this is October of 2026.
I want you to go back to 1917 to October, the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution, remember the Bolsheviks and the proletariat, Marxism, et cetera,
Go get on your AI and Google the Bolshevik Revolution and see if that's any different than what's going on in Europe, in Asia, in Africa right now, in France, in Italy, in New Delhi, in South America.
It's the Bolshevik Revolution and we know they've now undercovered the names of people, institutions who are supported and they're all Marxists.
It's the Bolshevik Revolution again.
honoring the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.
History always repeats itself, John.
Nick, I am afraid that you are entirely correct on that.
And even if it doesn't precisely repeat itself, as Mark Twain said, it often rhymes.
Joe Piper, any rebuttal?
Yeah, you won.
Thinking back through this and...
what we've talked about today, who would have thought that the 13-year-old young girl, Ms.
Tinker, would have led to what happened in freedom of speech, a case in 1969.
And then to think about it and say, we all have the right and we have the access to questions about who can vote and believe it or not,
There's a whole guidance that's been put out by the Brezelton Institute about people with mental disabilities and what the rights are.
And there are 13 states that talk about if you have a guardianship or something, whether you can vote or not.
Since my son's under guardianship, he can't vote because it's a mental incompetency.
That becomes an easy one.
But it's interesting to think about that.
And we've covered an awful lot today.
And folks, go out and vote.
whether you vote early, just don't vote often.
Guys, this has been such an outstanding show today.
I'll do my John McLaughlin prediction.
This episode of Iowa Law Talk on KXL with Piper and Critelli will with metaphysical, epidurgical certitude be nominated.
for an Iowa Broadcast News Association Award for 2026.
Catch the podcast on kxl.com slash podcast or go to your browser and type in kxl iowa law talk podcast.
You'll get to SoundCloud or maybe the kxl site itself and you can get the catalog of all these episodes.
In the meantime, write to us at Iowa Law Talk.
at KXEL.com.
Thanks again to Jeff Stein, all the good people at KXEL.
And until next Saturday in the Catbird seat at noon for Iowa Law Talk, this is John Jacobson for engineer Sean Xavier, Nicholas Cratelli, Joe Piper saying, be safe, be smart, be good, be strong, vote with a clear informed conscience.
And God bless us and God bless America.
God bless us, everyone.
Till we meet again, stay safe.
Bye-bye.
