Kanye West, one of the biggest music celebrity icons in the world, is running as the president of the United States of America. He announced his intentions to his followers on July 4 through Twitter.
Since then, people have been going crazy. Some are supporting while others oppose his intentions. Ever since West’s tweet came out I’ve been wondering if that is even possible or realistic.
Turns out that it’s not. With only around three months left until election day—Nov. 3— Kanye 2020 is impossible.
To run for president in the United States the applicant needs to meet these three constitutional requirements: be a natural-born citizen, be above the age of 35 and be a U.S. resident for the past 14 years.
After meeting these requirements, typically, the candidate will associate and represent themselves with one of the two political parties in the United States—the Democratic or Republican Party.
Despite West meeting the constitutional requirements, he isn’t a representative of any party. Thus, his only option is to run as an independent candidate or a write-in candidate.
To register independently, the potential presidential candidate will have to either get a certain number of signatures from potential voters or file presidential applications to the states.
The specific number of signatures and the application deadlines differ with every state.
Meanwhile, a write-in candidate can bypass the complex applications. However, their name won’t appear on ballot forms. Voters would have to literally write-in Kanye West’s name on the ballot.
Being a write-in candidate is extremely difficult, especially because West would have to persuade the voters to go in and write his name.
Additionally, nine states don’t even allow write-in candidates which immediately decreases West’s likelihood of winning the people’s votes.
Thus, the most realistic option for West is to run independently—which he started doing early in July. In some states, including Oklahoma, one can essentially pay to bypass deadlines and requirements.
However in most states, one would have to pass the other complex requirements to be considered a presidential candidate. In July, West paid $35,000 as an application filing fee to register as a candidate in Oklahoma.
He also tweeted asking South Carolinians to digitally sign a petition for him to qualify as a candidate in their state where he would later hold his first rally.
Despite these efforts, West’s application was rejected by The South Carolina Election Commission. Furthermore, West had already missed at least four states’ deadlines before even posting his initial tweet.
Not to mention the many other states’ deadlines he missed in July and the fact that he’s not acting fast enough. Thus, West is only qualified to appear on Oklahoma’s presidential ballot to date.
Despite West talking about running for the presidency since the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards, his efforts seem unplanned and last minute—further decreasing his chances of becoming president. All these factors make Kanye West 2020 impossible. Nevertheless, with proper early preparations and meeting application deadlines, Kanye 2024 is a possibility.