What is Ye doing?
Kanye West appears to be in the 2020 presidential race still despite reports that the rapper had abandoned his bid.
New York magazine reported Tuesday night that West had abandoned his bid, citing a consultant who had been working with West to get him on state ballots as an independent candidate.
But the source may have been inaccurate. On Wednesday, the Oklahoma State Election Board reported that West qualified to be listed as an independent candidate on the general election ballot.
Independent presidential candidate Kanye West has qualified for the General Election ballot in Oklahoma. (Today is Oklahoma’s deadline for Independent & Unrecognized Party presidential candidates to file statements of candidacy with their petitions or filing fee.)
— Oklahoma State Election Board (@OKelections) July 15, 2020
A Federal Election Commission statement of campaign organization was also filed on Wednesday, though campaign finance watchers were skeptical that it was a legitimate filing from West and his team rather than a prankster. The phone number associated with the filing is a Google Voice number, and the website associated with it was registered in 2018 with a European domain company.
Getting on the Oklahoma ballot as an independent required just the proper paperwork and a $35,000 filing fee, but he has little time or already missed his opportunity to amass signatures of registered voters to get him on the ballot in other states. West missed independent candidate filing deadlines in the key Electoral College states of Texas and North Carolina, among other states. Deadlines for Florida, South Carolina, and Delaware passed on Wednesday.
Well-sourced gossip site TMZ also reports that despite the story about West dropping out, he “is still very much in the 2020 Presidential race.”
