On August 13, the American Independent Party held its state convention in Sacramento, and nominated Donald Trump for President and Michael Pence for Vice-President. The California election code, section 13105(c), permits two qualified parties to jointly nominate the same presidential and vice-presidential candidates. The November ballot will list Trump and Pence, followed by “Republican, American Independent.”

The two parties will each nominate the same set of presidential elector candidates. California has 55 electoral votes. Probably the Republican Party will choose 50 and the AIP will choose five, and then both parties will submit the same list of presidential elector candidates. This will be the first time since 1940 that two parties in California jointly nominated the same presidential candidate.

on August 12, both sides in the lawsuit Libertarian Party of Maine v Dunlap, the ballot access case, asked the judge to put the lawsuit on hold until December 15, 2016. This is the case in which the judge granted injunctive relief to the Libertarian Party, putting it on the ballot this year. Although the injunction was granted, there has been no decision on whether the deadline for a new party to get on the ballot is constitutional. Both sides say it would be a waste of the court’s time to spend any more time on the case this year, because probably the legislature will improve the law next year.

The chief issue in the case is the deadline for a new party to qualify, December of the year before the election. A side issue is whether voters should be able to register into an unqualified party and have those registrations tallied.