On May 17, Americans Elect announced that it will not nominate anyone for President this year. The announcement came at 5 p.m. eastern time. Here is the text of the press release, courtesy of Talking Points Memo.

The last sentence makes it clear that Americans Elect is in no way disbanding itself. Americans Elect leaders feel their party will be active in future elections. There are about twelve states in which the party will be on the ballot automatically in 2014, even if it has no nominees for any office in 2012. Also Americans Elect, at least for now, expects to continue petitioning in Texas and Idaho, the two states where the drive is quite far along, but isn’t finished.

On May 16, U.S. District Court Judge Charles C. Lovell, a Reagan appointee, struck down two Montana laws that regulate campaign advertising. In both cases, the reason is that the laws are too vague. The case is Lair v Murry, 6:12-12.

One law says: “printed election material that includes information about another candidate’s voting record must include a disclosure of contrasting votes known to have been made by the same candidate on the same issue of closely related in time.” The other law makes it unlawful “for a person to misrepresent a candidate’s public voting record or any other matter that is relevant to the issues of the campaign with knowledge that the assertion is false.”

Gary Johnson’s campaign has released its first video ad, since Johnson obtained the Libertarian presidential nomination. See it here.