Kanye West’s “Candidacy” for President

Kanye West has had an on, off, and on again candidacy for President of the United States. At once it seems frivolous but at others it is clearly aimed at taking votes away from the presumptive Democratic Candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden.

And Mr. West does not deny his role as spoiler and it’s hard to track down the exact number of states…but it looks like he has filed in Wisconsin, Ohio, Colorado, West Virginia, and Arkansas. Even if he were to win those states, he wouldn’t have enough electoral college votes for the presidency.

In an interview with Forbes today, West did not deny that he was a “spoiler,” given that he does not have a shot at reaching 270 electoral votes. Asked by Forbes’ Randall Lane whether he was serving as a spoiler, West replied via text, “I’m not going to argue with you. Jesus is King.”

And there is some question about whether his nomination papers were delivered to the state on time or not: from Dan Bice at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

One record of the incident, reviewed by the Journal Sentinel, had Ruhland’s assistant entering the building about 20 seconds after 5 p.m. The pair then had to go to the commission’s third-floor offices, using the building’s notoriously slow elevator, and get their petitions stamped by state officials. 

From all appearances, it looks likes West’s team was a minute or two late. A WISN-TV (Channel 12) reporter at the scene tweeted that Ruhland entered the commission’s building “just after 5.”

“WEC staff will provide the Commission members with a detailed timeline surrounding the filing of the nomination papers as part of its report on ballot access for a future meeting,” Magney (a spokesman for the Elections Commission) said. “It will be up to the Commission to decide whether the deadline was met.”

And being Wisconsin and all, the courts will probably get into.

Should the dispute over West’s late registration ends up in litigation, three election lawyers said this week that the legal issue should be pretty straightforward. The 5 p.m. deadline for filing nomination papers, they said, doesn’t allow for any wiggle room.

“The Wisconsin Supreme Court has long held the deadline is ‘mandatory,’ and late filings cannot be allowed,” said Milwaukee lawyer Matthew O’Neill, an expert on campaign law.

My long range take on this…candidates for president shouldn’t be allowed on the ballot in any state if they haven’t successfully filed nomination papers in the majority of the states or in at least enough to possibly accumulate the necessary 270 Electoral College votes to win. Vanity campaigns and spoiler campaigns should be disallowed.

Now some interesting tidbits on Mr. West’s papers…there are the typical Mickey Mouse and other bogus signatures…which for some reason weren’t removed. Mr. West himself appears twice apparently and Senator Bernie Sanders appears once. Again these signatures weren’t removed yet they are obviously invalid. I didn’t review every page but the ones I did were ALL dated 8/3/2020 (update: found some 8/4/20). In most any campaign that would be suspect. And there are a lot of missing data…municipality names…circulator addresses…and circulators from Illinois and Las Vegas are pretty common. And goodness gracious, when they did cross out names, didn’t they have a marker or sharpie instead of the squiggly doodles to cross them out. Actually some of those look more legit those submitted.

If you want to see for yourself: here is a pdf. Be safe, don’t get hurt!

Share:

Related Articles