Kanye West’s presidential aspirations hit several more roadblocks this week after being booted from the ballot in three crucial midwestern states.
In Ohio, Secretary of State Frank LaRose said Kanye “failed to meet the necessary threshold for certification.” In Wisconsin, the state’s elections commission concluded that Kanye’s ballot signatures were invalid, because they were submitted past the 5:00 p.m. legal deadline on August 4th. And in Kanye’s home state of Illinois, the state’s board of elections backed a hearing officer’s previous conclusion that a majority of the signatures submitted by Kanye were invalid or fraudulent.
As it stands now, Kanye is on the ballot in five states: Arkansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Utah, and Vermont, and pending verification in six others: Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Virginia. However, because he previously missed the filing deadline in 25 states, and was booted from the ballot in New Jersey in addition to Ohio, Wisconsin, and Illinois, Kanye no longer has a path to 270 electoral votes. Now, the only way for him to win on November 3rd is as a write-in candidate.
His ballot access issues notwithstanding, Kanye remains a long-shot candidate, polling at just 2% nationally. He’s held no campaign events since his disastrous kick-off rally in South Carolina last month, and his own wife has flatly stated that he’s in the middle of a bipolar episode. And yet Republican operatives, including several associates of Donald Trump, continue to assist Kanye in getting on states’ ballots, with the hope that he’ll siphon Black votes away from Joe Biden. When asked recently whether he’s OK playing the spoiler candidate, Kanye told Forbes, “I’m not going to argue with you.”
