Yet another state has gained ballot access for the Constitution Party. The New Mexico Secretary of State confirmed in mid-July that the Constitution Party had submitted enough valid signatures to qualify the party for ballot access in that state for 2018 and 2020. A total of 2,565 valid signatures were required. What is most remarkable about our success there is that over 4,000 signatures were gathered in only five weeks. The key individuals in that effort were our new state chairman of New Mexico, J.W. Fakes and Kent Miller, state chairman of Arizona. Kent traveled to Albuquerque and spent nearly five weeks gathering signatures every day. He is an extremely effective petitioner. With New Mexico now on the ballot, Kent has returned to Arizona and is beginning the signature gathering effort in that state. Achieving ballot access for 2020 in Arizona will be a huge achievement for the party. With it’s 11 electoral votes, Arizona has the third highest number of electoral votes in the West. Only Washington and California have more.

August 1st is the signature deadline for Don Blankenship to turn in his petitions in the state of West Virginia. As of August 19th he had submitted over 11,400 signatures, more than 7,000 of which were deemed valid, thereby surpassing the required number of 6,000 valid signatures. His supporters are continuing to gather signatures until the deadline and the final total is expected to exceed the 12,000 mark.

As anticipated, the West Virginia Secretary of State has declined to accept his application to run for the U.S. Senate seat on the Constitution Party due to a sore loser law that took effect June 5th. What is interesting is that the SOS did place on the Mountain Party ticket (state affiliate of the Green party) both a Democrat and a Republican who lost their primary races. Therefore, Don is preparing to file a lawsuit to require the state to place his name on the ballot on the Constitution Party ticket. He expects to win that court case. Should the courts rule against him, Don could still run as a write-in candidate. He is well enough known in the state that as such he would poll a significant number of votes. Don is getting wide publicity on TV, radio and in newspapers across the state. He comes across very well in the media interviews.

In North Carolina, the Secretary of State has declined to place three of our candidates on the November ballot due to a sore loser law that became law after those candidates had already filed for office. That issue too is being challenged in the courts. We will keep you posted on both developments

Yet another exciting bit of information is that our nationwide voter registration totals are nearing the 100,000 mark. The latest numbers that I have stand at 98,925, We expect to exceed the 100,000 mark in the next couple of months.

Our increasing success has been in large measure due to the faithful and consistent financial support that we have received from so many of you. Year-to-date, donations to the party are up over 44% from the same time period of last year. It is this type of support that has enabled us to accomplish what we have. As national chairman, I cannot thank you enough. Your donations, however large or small, are critical to our growing success. As mentioned in previous newsletters, you can go to our national website www.constitutionparty.com to make a donation or you can simply send payment by check to The Constitution Party, P.O. Box 1782, Lancaster, PA 17608. Likewise, we encourage you to continue to share our emails with like-minded family and friends.

We are making a concerted effort to provide a state by state listing on the national website of all the candidates that are running for office on the Constitution Party banner this year. If you become aware of someone running for office that is not on the list, please advise us so that those candidates can be included in the listing.

Once again, my sincere thanks to each of you,

National Chairman

Constitution Party

www.constitutionparty.com