A panel of state officials ruled that three Libertarian party candidates will not be on the ballot in November because they failed to meet Iowa election requirements.
The State Objection Panel convened Monday after members of the Republican Party filed challenges against four Libertarian candidates last week over name discrepancies and missing filings.
The panel determined Marco Battaglia, a 3rd U.S. Congressional District candidate, as well as Nicholas Gluba and Jules Cutler, who are running for governor and lieutenant governor, were ineligible after the panel agreed with objectors' challenges.
A fourth candidate, Rick Stewart, who is running in Iowa's 2nd Congressional District, will remain on the ballot after the panel rejected the objection that Stewart should have filed to run under his full legal name, Richard.
The panel, which consisted of Attorney General Brenna Bird, Secretary of State Paul Pate and State Auditor Rob Sand, voted to remove 3rd District candidate Marco Battaglia because the paperwork he filed to run does not use his legal name, Mark Thomas Andersen.
Libertarian Party Chair Stephanie Berlin argued that Battaglia filed to run under the name that people know him as.
"There is no option that he is anybody other than Marco Battaglia, and in fact, if you ask people 'Who is Mark Andersen?' they're like, 'I don't know,'" she said. "But this gentleman has name recognition, and so no authority — just to sum up — shows that we have a statutory requirement that gives and requires a legal name."
Sand, the sole Democrat on the panel, voted to keep Battaglia on the ballot, agreeing with Berlin that running under the name Mark Andersen could create confusion.
But Bird, a Republican, said she thought the move violated state law.
"The Iowa code says the candidate name needs to be in the form the candidate wants it to be on the ballot, and I think that means in the form of the candidate's name, not someone else's name," she said.
The panel also voted to remove Gluba and Cutler after agreeing with the objection that Cutler failed to file the required affidavit for candidacy.
For the objections related to Cutler and Gluba, Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig replaced Sand, who recused himself because he's the Democratic candidate for governor.
Cutler argued that she tried to file the affidavit, but that Dani Phillips, an elections support specialist in the Secretary of State's Office, erroneously told her she didn't need to as lieutenant governor.
"I am willing to give her benefit of a doubt that this was a mistake. It is confusing," Cutler said.
Phillips told the panel she only received paperwork for Gluba.
Cutler and Berlin both said they plan to appeal the panel's decisions to a district court.
"We have over ... 8,000 petitions signed. I think not appealing it will be doing disservice to people who actually sign those petitions," Cutler said.
In 2024, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled three Libertarian candidates couldn't be ballot because the Libertarian Party of Iowa failed to follow state law for nominating candidates by convention.
Iowa Libertarians briefly gained major party status in 2022 when their top of ticket candidate for governor got more than 2% of the vote, but they lost that status in 2024 after Libertarian presidential candidate Chase Oliver received just 0.4% of the vote.
