It’s six weeks ago that independent presidential candidate Kanye West launched his bid for the late entry into the White House.
Since then, the fast-paced politician has been waging an up-and-coming battle for voting with access to voting per state without any of the traditional campaign infrastructure.
West has managed to get himself on the ballot in three states: Colorado, Oklahoma and Vermont.
Unfortunately for the billionaire sneaker mogul, his entry on July 4 into the race came too late for Indiana, New Mexico, North Carolina and Texas, where the submission deadlines for independent presidential candidates were already over.
The submission dates for Delaware, Florida, Michigan, Nevada and South Carolina followed in the days following West’s announcement, making him unable to make them.
Oklahoma had a tight deadline, but a representative for West met it just in time with the necessary paperwork and $ 35,000 filing fee.
Of the 538 votes cast in the general election, 270 need candidates to win the presidency. By the first week in August, West had already forgotten 225 votes from Electoral College due to missing deadlines as well as problems with his petitions.
West had until last Friday to get to the polls in the critical state of California.
The rapper’s campaign has been shrouded in secrecy, making it unclear whether he submitted 197,000 signatures on Friday night.
The Golden State has 55 election votes, which would make it a must-win for the rapper after sacrificing access to voting in so many other states.
If he does not make it to the polls in California, it will become mathematically impossible for West to win the presidency in 2020.
In recent weeks, deadlines have also been set for Illinois and New Jersey, where West was bouncing off ballot papers for invalid signatures.
In late July, an election lawyer in New Jersey became the first to file a legal challenge against one of the ballot boxes for West
The lawyer, Scott Salmon, claimed in a legal complaint late last month that 600 of the sneaker mogul’s 1,327 signatures were fraudulent, something West would have left with less than the state’s minimum of 800 required signatures.
Salmon also claimed that some signatures were written in almost identical handwriting and others lacked full addresses.
In Illinois, West started voting after state election officials declared that 1,900 of the 3,128 signatures he submitted were invalid, leaving him short of the 2,500 required.
However, West’s petitions in Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin are still being considered by their state election boards.
The Wisconsin petition faces two major legal challenges, although both claim that numerous signatures were fraudulent and used famous names such as Mickey Mouse and Bernie Sanders.
If West makes it to the polls in California, he has left 17 other states, where the deadline has not been passed for independent presidential candidates.
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