Kanye West files to appear on Illinois ballot

Kanye West on Monday filed to appear on the Illinois 2020 presidential ballot in November.

The rapper, who was raised in Chicago, submitted 412 pages of signature sheets to appear on the ballot as an independent, Illinois State Board of Elections Public Information Officer Matt Dietrich said in a statement to The Hill. 

However, the filing does not mean West, who announced his 2020 bid on July 4, will automatically make it onto the ballot. Election officials will need to certify that he received 2,500 signatures, and an objection period to West’s candidacy will run until next Monday. 

Petition sheets typically contain 10 names per sheet. Not every line of the pages West submitted are filled, Dietrich said. 

Representatives for West filed the sheets just four minutes before the Illinois State Board of Elections’s deadline on Monday, the same day he failed to make the presidential ballot in South Carolina.

West, who is married to Kim Kardashian West, last week qualified to appear on the Oklahoma presidential ballot amid some confusion over whether his White House bid is serious. Representatives for West sent the necessary paperwork and paid a $35,000 filling fee, but an adviser to West, Steve Kramer, also told New York magazine’s The Intelligencer that West was dropping his 2020 bid.

West on July 16 filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission.

West held his first campaign rally on Sunday, making headlines when he said in South Carolina that renowned abolitionist and activist Harriet Tubman “never actually freed the slaves, she just had them work for other white people.”