Barriers facing a Kanye West 2020 presidential run
It’s hard to know how seriously to take a tweet from Kanye West. On July 4, he tweeted, “I am running for president of the United States!” Sadly, “journalists” from outlets like Reuters and ABC News chose not to investigate and simply engaged in the embarrassing contemporary practice of reciting a tweet as if it’s news, without, say, you know, engaging in journalism (e.g., investigating, interviewing relevant parties, reporting, etc.).
I doubt it’s serious, but for the good reason that even if it’s earnest, it’s still probably not serious. Ballot access remains a real issue for a presidential candidate at this late date. Mr. West would have two viable paths.
The first is to co-opt an existing political party’s presidential nomination. It seems unlikely the Democratic or Republican Parties would do so, nor the Libertarian Party, which formally has a nominee. Other parties like the Green Party, Constitution Party, or Reform Party are at various stages of their nominating process, and they’re unlikely to appear on the ballot in all fifty states and D.C. I suppose it’s possible, but this process seems unlikely.
The second is to run as an independent candidate. (A related path would be to establish a new political party, but this is more complicated and something I’ll dismiss for the moment.) This requires the Herculean effort of securing ballot access in all fifty states and D.C. One doesn’t need to get on the ballot everywhere to win the presidency—in theory, access in 270 electoral votes’ worth of states is enough. But, to be frank, there’s a material difference, in my view, between serious independent candidates like John Anderson in 1980 and Ross Perot in 1992, and unserious independent candidates like Lyndon LaRouche in several elections and Evan McMullin in 2016—breadth of a campaign to every (or nearly every) state lends seriousness to the ticket. And while write-in candidates should not be easily dismissed in local or even statewide elections, presidential candidates seem hard to take seriously.
(It’s worth noting that while I’ve seen the claim that Mr. West’s name could be written-in “anywhere,” that’s not true—at least, not written in and counted anywhere. Several states do not recognize write-in votes for the president, which the Supreme Court has acknowledged is legitimate if ballot access rules otherwise are not too onerous. Indeed, think how a presidential election works—one isn’t casting votes for the president, but for a slate of electors who’ll cast votes for that candidate when the Electoral College meets. A write-in campaign ought, I think, to require, at the very least, some pre-election filing of the slate of electors who’ll support that candidate, given that the ballots in most states don’t list the electors. And frankly, several states don’t have rules about even this while purporting to authorize write-in presidential votes.)
The ballot access deadline has (in theory—more on that in a moment) already passed in Texas, Indiana, Maine, New Mexico, New York, and North Carolina. Other ballot access deadlines arise in the next couple of weeks for some states. Off the top, Mr. West would be hard to take seriously, even if, today, he had amassed an army of signature-gatherers to canvass the remaining states (and challenges for signature-collection seem exacerbated during a pandemic). Some of these efforts seem tough at this stage—like Florida’s 132,000 signature requirement by July 15.
In theory, for two reasons. I borrow deadlines from Ballotpedia, and maybe they’re not all up to date. But that’s in part because many states have been pushing back their ballot access deadlines by legislative rule or executive order due to the coronavirus pandemic. Some have lowered signature requirements, and there have been rumbling about moving to online signatures in places. States like New York have shown willingness to be more generous. It’s possible, then, that pending or apparently-passed deadlines may not have yet actually passed.
Another is that Mr. West could litigate, a la John Anderson in 1980. Federal courts have been using flabby balancing tests to justify giving independent or minor party candidates additional opportunities to secure ballot access when the rules are too restrictive—and courts seem increasingly willing to do so during the coronavirus pandemic. Nevertheless, winning several kinds of challenges in different federal courts (absent Supreme Court intervention), all ahead of Election Day, seems not only to require extraordinary legal coordination and preparation (something a tweet on running a campaign seems to lack), but also extraordinary levels of success. UPDATE July 6: The Fourth Circuit has recently affirmed North Carolina’s exceedingly early March 3 independent presidential candidate petition deadline.
I’m sure some will speculate about which major party candidate Mr. West’s candidacy would most affect, whether his appearance on the ballot in certain states but not others might alter the Electoral College, and so on. My point is rather this—it’s hard to take a candidacy announced this late terribly seriously because, to be a serious candidate, one ought to appear on the bulk of ballots in the United States, and candidates announcing at this late date have little chance of doing so.
It’s also true, of course, that even an unserious candidate like Messrs. LaRouche and McMullin could disrupt a presidential election—playing a “spoiler” role in select states, and so on. That’s different than how I’m using the term “serious,” but, of course, I recognize that this may be the greater concern for many political watchers.
This post has been updated as new information arises.
UPDATE July 7: As of early July 7, there is no indication of any attempt by Mr. West to gather signatures in any states, which suggests, as this opening paragraph provided, that a tweet is not newsworthy.
UPDATE July 8: This free-wheeling interview at Forbes shows a couple of things. First, while he coins the name “Birthday Party,” his bid would assuredly be an independent one, and the “party” affiliation would be informal, at least for 2020. Second, Forbes reports, “For much of the phone calls, his core message, strategically, was that he has 30 days to make a final decision about running for president. At that point, he says, he’d miss the filing deadline for most states, though he believes an argument could be made to get onto any ballots he’s missed, citing coronavirus issues.” This reflects a seriousness I hadn’t anticipated—as I explained earlier, some ballot access deadlines might be feasible to make up given the coronavirus. But, 30 days as a “final decision” suggests that he’s not trying to get on the ballot today, which, as I noted in my July 7 update, seems strange and hard to justify. While coronavirus issues can help him make up some ground in some states, the more state deadlines slip away, the harder it is to meet them. Starting a run in early August—that is, starting signature-gathering then—would not be feasible.
UPDATE July 14: Ben Jacobs reports that there were some fits and starts of an attempt at ballot access in at least Florida and South Carolina, but it appears those have ended.
UPDATE July 15: Mr. West has filed an independent candidate statement in Oklahoma with a slate of electors.