SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED when registering in pypitest

Question

I followed Peter Down’s instructions on directing the package to PyPI at http://peterdowns.com/posts/first-time-with-pypi.html

I have a PyPI Live account and PyPI Test, I can log in and the accounts have been verified by email.

But when I tried to run this in my repo:

python setup.py register -r pypitest 

I get:

 running register running check Registering [package_name] to https://testpypi.python.org/pypi Server response (500): <urlopen error [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:590)> 

Any idea what went wrong? I have a ~/.pypirc file written according to my username and passwords.

How can this be solved so that I can register the package on PyPI?