This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, January 20th, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

One popular argument in favor of restricting speech during elections is that some spending might corrupt candidates.

But what if the amount of money is tiny?

And the candidate?

Well, it's a ballot initiative.

The case of Justice V. Hoseman offers the Supreme Court an opportunity to weigh in if they take the case.

Cato's Trevor Burris and Alan Dickerson with the Center for Competitive Politics

talk about the case now seeking review at the High Court.

The Cato Institute and the Center for Competitive Politics and the Independence Institute have assembled

a brief in the case of Gordon Vance Justice v Delbert Hoseman, which I'll just like to say

over and over.

So what are the arguments here for Mr. Justice, Alan Dickerson?

Well, there's a few though.

I mean, the most important one is, as you you alluded to the fact that there aren't

any candidates in this case this is entirely about ballot speech talking about

whether or not Mississippi should pass a referendum creating a constitutional amendment blocking the sort of eminent

domain abuses that were present in a city of London versus Kilo.

And what what there's a couple of interesting facts here.

One is that the amount of money involved is miniscule in this case.

The traditional justification for making people register with the state when they want to speak about politics is that, you know, the voters need to know who is standing behind candidates or in this case standing behind a particular ballot proposition.

In this case you had five friends who were in the purest sense

...