On April 12, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth issued this 12-page order in Nader v Federal Election Commission, 1:10cv989. Nader had filed the case in 2010, arguing that the FEC was wrong to have dismissed his complaint against the Democratic Party for spending millions of dollars in 2004 to keep him off the ballot, and then failing to report these expenditures. Nader couldn’t file the case earlier than 2010 because it took the FEC so long to dismiss Nader’s complaint.

On November 9, 2011, Judge Lamberth had dismissed Nader’s lawsuit against the FEC. On December 9, Nader had asked him to reconsider. Judge Lamberth won’t reconsider, but it is noteworthy that he wrote such a lengthy explanation defending his original decision. Nader will appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

On April 12, Wisconsin state election officials determined that the Americans Elect petition has enough valid signatures. The state requires 10,000, and Americans Elect had submitted 17,000. Wisconsin now has four qualified parties. The others are Republican, Democratic, and Constitution.

Groups that are not qualified parties can still place nominees on the November ballot, with the party label, if they file independent candidate petitions. The independent petition for statewide nominees is 2,000 signatures.

On April 12, the Federal Election Commission considered whether to let U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein raise more money from contributors who had already given her the maximum donation, for he re-election campaign this year. See this story, which says the FEC Commissioners spent considerable time talking about the case, but didn’t come to a conclusion. The FEC will consider the request again on April 26.

The reason for Feinstein’s request is that the money she raised originally was stolen by her campaign treasurer, and she has little hope of recovering more than a fraction of that money.