California held a presidential primary for six parties on June 7, including the American Independent Party. None of the seven candidates whose names were printed on the AIP ballot were well-known. It is now been determined that approximately two-thirds of the voters who used an AIP ballot wrote in someone for president, instead of voting for any of the listed candidates.

Amador County election officials kindly made the write-ins available, even though there were no declared write-in presidential candidates in the AIP primary. Donald Trump received the most write-in votes, and polled substantially more votes than anyone listed on the ballot. Bernie Sanders received the 2nd highest number of votes, and Hillary Clinton received the third highest. Thanks to Mark Seidenberg for this news.

On July 7, Better for America issued a press release saying it has enough valid signatures in New Mexico. However, the press release turned out to be inaccurate. This post has been re-written. The original post said the Secretary of State had verified the petition, but that was not true.

Pennsylvania State Senator Mike Folmer has been introducing ballot access reform in each of the last four sessions of the legislature. His commentary on the recent change in Pennsylvania ballot access is carried here, in a guest column in the Lebanon Daily News. It is somewhat disappointing that he did not mention that the new rules for 2016 include a county distribution requirement, something that has been held unconstitutional in sixteen reported decisions, including two by the U.S. Supreme Court.