I haven’t weighed in much on the Kanye West presidential run since mid-July because, well, I haven’t much of legal interest to write. There have been some typical ballot access issues and some petitioning challenges. He’s gotten ballot access in a few places but not most others, and he’s been kicked off the ballot in several places. He’s not running a “serious” campaign, as I indicated in July. And so I haven’t spent much effort thinking about it.

But the challenge in Arizona to Mr. West’s candidacy piqued my interest, because a district court got the law, in my view, quite wrong.

Arizona law provides under Section 16-341, “Any qualified elector who is not a registered member of a political party that is recognized pursuant to this title may be nominated as a candidate for public office otherwise than by primary election or by party committee pursuant to this section.” (Emphasis added.) Mr. West is apparently a registered Republican in Wyoming. Plaintiffs sought to exclude Mr. West from the ballot by arguing that he sought ballot access through a nonpartisan route, which is forbidden if he’s a Republican. The district court agreed, saying that the “most sensible reading” of the statute is that Mr. West is a Republican.

But when we register to vote and affiliate with a political party, we do not affiliate with a “national” party. We affiliate with a state party. In Arizona, there is a Republican Party, recognized under Arizona law, with its headquarters in Arizona. But Mr. West is registered with the Republican Party of Wyoming, not of Arizona. Wyoming’s Republican Party is not recognized under Arizona law.

True, the Republican Party of Arizona holds a presidential nominating primary to send delegates to the Republican National Convention. And true, this November, the Republican Party of Arizona, like the other Republican Parties throughout the country, will name Donald Trump and Mike Pence as their presidential ticket. But how the state parties affiliate with the national apparatus is a different question.

Maybe this seems too cute by half, but it’s a testament to how presidential elections just look different. For instance, Minnesota doesn’t have a “Democratic Party.” It has a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, but it’s affiliated with the national Democratic Party and participates in the Democratic National Convention.

We might want a disaffiliation statute if you’re an Arizona Republican running for an nonpartisan slot for, say, Congress or the state legislature. The Supreme Court in Storer v. Brown upheld such a requirement to protect the interests of the political party from sham candidacies or party raiding. But for presidential tickets, however, we’d need more express statutory clarity—at least, I think so, and my reading of the statute, I think, is the more persuasive view.

Puzzles when crossing state lines in election contests is hardly a novel problem. In 2015 in Arizona, for instance, a court threw out a criminal conviction for someone accused of voting twice, once in Arizona and once in Colorado. The court noted that the defendant hadn’t voted twice under the statute—the statute applied to Arizona elections, not other states’ elections.

It might be too late for an appellate court to correct this misunderstanding of state law. I don’t know whether Mr. West would appeal, or if there are other bases for throwing out his petition. But it’s simply to point out, I think, that disaffiliation statutes simply look different in presidential elections with out-of-state candidates.

UPDATE: On September 8, the Arizona Supreme Court affirmed the exclusion of Mr. West from the ballot, but not on this basis, which is good news. That said, it does appear that the Court used a novel rule previously inapplicable to other candidates, which may be its own problem….