These 11 States Will Have Kanye West on the Presidential Election Ballot in November

 
Kanye West

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Kanye West, who was once a dedicated supporter of President Donald Trump, is pursuing a 2020 presidential bid as a member of the “Birthday Party,” and is officially on the ballot in 11 states.

West has faced trouble getting his name on the ballot in most states: He was rejected in Arizona because he filed as an independent but is registered as a Republican, and in Virginia, where he didn’t have enough valid signatures.

The rapper-turned-aspiring politician also has pending lawsuits in Wisconsin, Ohio, and West Virginia — states where he was rejected from the ballot before he getting sued. West had even hired canvassers from the petitioning firm Let The Voters Decide to help him get on the Wisconsin ballot, but ultimately was unsuccessful.

Although he racked up 3,128 signatures in his home state of Illinois, his campaign faced three challenges that questioned the legitimacy of the signatures, along with the validity of the paperwork he submitted. One review found that 1,928 of them were invalid, meaning he was 1,300 signatures short of the 2,500 needed to become an independent candidate on the states’ ballot.

Despite the losses, West has gotten his name on the ballot in Colorado and Minnesota: States that Hillary Clinton won by a narrow margin in 2016 — making it slightly harder for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to secure the anti-Trump votes. West is also on the ballot in Vermont, another blue state, and in Republican-leaning states Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Utah, Idaho, Iowa, and Tennessee.

In order to win a presidential election, however, a candidate must win the votes of at least 270 out of the 538 electors in the U.S. electoral college, and of the states West succeeded in, it’s not possible for him to reach the electoral votes needed to win.

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