Filing closed for the Missouri presidential primary on November 20. Three parties are entitled to a primary: Democratic, Republican and Libertarian. Entrance to the primary was by paying $1,000.

Six Libertarians filed: Dave Hollist, Daniel Imperato, Michael Jingozian, Steve Kubby, George Phillies, and Wayne Root.

The Republican primary has 12 candidates: the well-known nine (Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Alan Keyes, John McCain, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Tom Tancredo, and Fred Thompson) and also Daniel Gilbert of Arden, North Carolina; Hugh Cort of Birmingham, Alabama; and Virgil Wiles of Florissant, Missouri.

The Democratic primary has 9 candidates: Ralph Spelbring of Elkhart, Indiana; and the well-known Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson.

On November 21, the national Voting Rights project of the American Civil Liberties Union asked all active judges in the 10th circuit to rehear Libertarian Party of New Mexico v Vigil-Giron. The issue for the 10th circuit is a technical one involving court procedure. The U.S. District Court had refused to allow evidence to be presented, and the three judges on the 10th circuit had then said that the US District Court’s action was permitted, because an ACLU document describing what evidence it wanted to establish was too short (it was five pages long).

The underlying issue in the case is whether it is constitutional for New Mexico to require one petition to qualify the party, and then, after the party is qualified and nominates its candidates by convention, whether each nominee must then get his or her own separate petition. The original case had pointed out that it would be absurd to expect someone who wins a major party primary to then circulate a petition to be on the November ballot.

On November 20, another hearing was held in Texas Reform Party v Reform Party of the USA, in state court in Dallas, Texas. This case had been filed by the “Dallas” (Foster) faction of the national party on September 14, 2007. A hearing held in September had resulted in a temporary injunction against the “Yuma” (Martin/O’Hara) faction of the party from representing itself as national officers of the Reform Party.

However, at the November 20 hearing, the judge dissolved the injunction, and struck all the evidence that had been presented in September by the people who had filed the case. John Blare argued for the defendants, and he appears to have successfully persuaded the court that the three state parties of the Reform Party who filed the lawsuit were not bona fide state Reform Parties.