On December 20, the Federal Election Commission determined that Duncan Hunter and Dennis Kucinich qualify for primary season matching funds. The FEC also set the amounts that each of the 7 candidates will receive next year in the FEC’s first payment of such funds.

The amounts for Democrats will be: John Edwards $8,800,000; Chris Dodd $1,400,000; Joe Biden $857,000; Dennis Kucinich $100,000. For Republicans, John McCain $5,800,000; Tom Tancredo $2,100,000; Duncan Hunter $100,000.

These leading candidates have not sought matching funds: Republicans Rudy Guiliani, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson; and Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson.

Although Tom Tancredo withdrew on December 20, it does not necessarily follow that he can’t receive primary season matching funds, although the issue is unclear. If he had waited until January, he clearly would have been entitled to the funds.

Any party that is not now on the Texas ballot, and wishes to be on the ballot in 2008, must tell the Texas Secretary of State no later than January 2, 2008. That deadline is only two weeks away, and so far only the Green Party has filed the necessary form. The Libertarian Party is not affected since it is already on the Texas ballot.

This advance notice law was passed in 1993. It is probably unconstitutional, but no one has ever challenged it. It effectively makes it impossible for a new party to be organized in an election year. Of course, the only group that would have standing to challenge the law would be a party that was formed in an election year (i.e., an even-numbered year). The last time a new national party was formed in an even-numbered year, and which tried to get on ballots in the year it was formed, was 1992, when the Natural Law Party was formed in April.

Past parties of great significance that were not formed until an even-numbered year, and which tried to run candidates in the year they were formed, were the Republican Party in 1854, and the Progressive Party of 1912.

Three constitutional ballot access lawsuits filed by Ralph Nader in 2004 are still pending, in addition to his lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee for conspiring to keep him off as many ballots in 2004 as possible.

Nader’s Hawaii case will have a hearing in U.S. District Court on January 28, 2008. It challenges the practice of requiring an independent presidential candidate to obtain six times as many signatures as an entire new political party. It also challenges a lack of due process when Hawaii checks signatures on petitions.

His Ohio case is pending in the 6th circuit. It is Nader v Blackwell, and argues that past Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell should be held personally liable for permitting initiative petitions to be circulated by any adult, yet at the same time requiring independent candidate petitions to be circulated only by people who had been registered voters in an Ohio precinct for the previous 30 days. At the time, the law had identical requirements for initiative circulators and independent candidate circulators, yet Blackwell relaxed the law for initiatives, and not for Nader. It was obvious at the time that the law was unconstitutional, since in 1999 the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that states cannot force circulators to be registered voters.

Nader’s case against Arizona is pending in the 9th circuit. The oral argument will be in March, 2008, at the earliest. It challenges the early June independent presidential petition deadline (the 2nd earliest in the nation, after Texas’ deadline). It also challenges Arizona’s law that only in-state residents can circulate for an independent presidential candidate.