According to several reports, Republican political operatives are doing all they can to boost rapper Kanye West‘s bid for president. But due to technical foul ups, West has been booted off the ballot in five states so far.
Earlier this month, West was blocked from the Illinois ballot after failing to get the 2,500 valid names needed to to qualify. On Thursday, he failed to qualify for the Montana state ballot after only 3,972 signatures out of the nearly 8,800 his campaign turned in were deemed valid.
Now Bloomberg is reporting that three more states will not be including Kanye on their ballots.
West Virginia has determined that West’s campaign had only 6,383 of the 7,144 valid signatures needed to qualify. The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted 5-1 on Thursday to block West from the ballot because his campaign turned in nomination papers there after the August 4 filing deadline. Ohio has also ruled that he failed to qualify.
Reports say Republicans boosting West’s ballot efforts in other states have fueled suspicions that he was being used as a spoiler candidate against Joe Biden, but that theory “made less sense in Montana, which Trump won by 20 percentage points in 2016,” according to the Associated Press.
West will so far be appearing on the ballots in Arkansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Utah and Vermont, according to spokespersons for the election offices in those states.
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