West Virginia has become the latest state to confirm that Kanye West won’t appear on the presidential ballot, after failing to secure the amount of signatures required.
The office of Secretary of State Mac Warner confirmed on Friday (August 21) that West needed to secure 7,144 signatures from voters in the state to confirm his place.
He failed to qualify after submitting 15,000 signatures, of which only 13,865 were legible, and only 6,383 were confirmed registered voters in West Virginia.
The latest blow to his beleaguered campaign comes after he was removed from the ballot in Ohio and Illinois after being barred from featuring in Wisconsin.
The rapper’s 2020 presidential campaign, under the banner of The Birthday Party, has hit a series of roadblocks since he announced it earlier this year, including missing deadlines to get his name on the ballot in numerous states.
Ohio election officials have removed him from the ballot due to mismatched paperwork. According to Cincinatti.com, the Ohio secretary of state’s office judged that both the signature and information presented on West’s petition and statement of candidacy didn’t match up to those featured on petitions signed by voters.
The rapper has also been taken off the ballot in his home state of Illinois. The board of elections reinforced an earlier decision made by a hearing officer that a majority of the signatures submitted by West were invalid or fraudulent, according to Consequence Of Sound.
Currently, West’s name will appear on ballots in Arkansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Utah and Vermont. Decisions are still pending in Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Tennessee and Virginia.
Recently, a poll revealed that only two percent of Black voters in the US were behind West in his bid to become the next President.
Over the weekend, Kanye faced backlash after he was accused of “disrespecting Islam” with his new Yeezy boosts.