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Kanye West for President - mechanics of it

How does one arrive at a number like
79,939
signatures on the petition?
Is that a percent of population?
Governor's numerology cosine?
New Year's Day's value for the distance of the Earth's spin axis from the geographical North Pole in milliarcseconds?
 
Keith&Co. said:
How does one arrive at a number like
79,939
signatures on the petition?
Is that a percent of population?
Governor's numerology cosine?
New Year's Day's value for the distance of the Earth's spin axis from the geographical North Pole in milliarcseconds?
Click to expand...
I did the research: Ballot access requirements for presidential candidates in Texas - Ballotpedia
An independent candidate may obtain access to the general election ballot by filing a petition and application with the secretary of state. The petition must contain signatures equaling at least 1 percent of the total votes cast for all candidates in the previous presidential election. The application and petition must be submitted no later than the second Monday in May of the election year.
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I went to  2016 United States presidential election, and I found 8,969,226 votes for President in Texas in 2016. 1% of that is 89,692 votes. So Ballotpedia's number is a bit out of date.
 
southernhybrid said:
Did you read my post, Loren? He is starting his own party. He calls it the Birthday Party! Seriously! The guy is nuts.
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Having his own political party is a start, but his problems won't end there. The states have different procedures for recognizing political parties, like having a petition with at least 1% of the number of votes cast in the most recent election for the state's governor.
 
southernhybrid said:
Did you read my post, Loren? He is starting his own party. He calls it the Birthday Party! Seriously! The guy is nuts.
Click to expand...

The party's name is memorable, short and quirky. Not necessarily bad attributes for a name.
Tells us nothing of the party itself nor whether we should take it seriously or not.

In Australia we have had the Pirate Party, The Sun-Dried Tomato Party and the Party! Party! Party.

The UK has my favourite - the Monster Raving Looney Party.
 
lpetrich said:
Ballot access for presidential candidates - Ballotpedia has a good collection of details on how to get on the ballot. One has to do so state-by-state, and if one only does that for some states, one won't be on the ballot the other states.

I added up the signature requirements and the filing fees listed by that article, and for all 50 states, I found 795,096 signatures and $36,500 of filing fees.

One can run as a write-in candidate, but 8 states do not allow that, 33 require some paperwork about one's run, and the remaining 9 states don't need any such thing. The paperwork is so that a state's Board of Elections will count any write-in votes that one gets.


It would be easier if one was running in some political party, but I don't know which party would nominate Kanye West. I'm not familiar with most of the minor parties, but I doubt that any of them would want to nominate someone who has no history of involvement with them. As to the two major parties, they are wrapping up their primary elections, so it's too late for that.
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Does one need to be on all the states ballots though?
My understanding on how your Electoral College works is that it is necessary to get a majority of the College's votes so if you concentrate on California, Texas, Florida, New York etc. you might get the votes without dispersing scare resources on the smaller states.
 
Tigers! said:
Does one need to be on all the states ballots though?
My understanding on how your Electoral College works is that it is necessary to get a majority of the College's votes so if you concentrate on California, Texas, Florida, New York etc. you might get the votes without dispersing scare resources on the smaller states.
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Yes, but every candidate is doing the same math. They are concentrating on the states with the most bang4buck, too. If you magically split Calif, Fla, NY, and Texas with them, they'll edge ahead with the existing party voters everywhere else.
 
I think Mr West is simply attempting to garner the highly valuable African American demographic of Vermin Supreme supporters.

Should he succeed, he could grab up to zero of Mr Supreme's zero electoral college votes in November.
 
lpetrich said:
southernhybrid said:
Did you read my post, Loren? He is starting his own party. He calls it the Birthday Party! Seriously! The guy is nuts.
Click to expand...
Having his own political party is a start, but his problems won't end there. The states have different procedures for recognizing political parties, like having a petition with at least 1% of the number of votes cast in the most recent election for the state's governor.
Click to expand...

Of course it won't help him. It's just funny and he's an irrational nut job. He has absolutely no idea what it takes to run for office. As I said earlier, some of his friends have said that he suffers from a mental illness. They know him well, so they are probably correct in their assumption.
 
lpetrich said:
southernhybrid said:
Did you read my post, Loren? He is starting his own party. He calls it the Birthday Party! Seriously! The guy is nuts.
Click to expand...
Having his own political party is a start, but his problems won't end there. The states have different procedures for recognizing political parties, like having a petition with at least 1% of the number of votes cast in the most recent election for the state's governor.
Click to expand...

Will he wear a rubber boot on his head like Vermin Supreme? Who's going to be his running mate?
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
In West's defense, Trump's run was also a publicity stunt that got out of hand. But that stunt started quite earlier.
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At least eight years earlier, right? Maybe this is eight years before Kanye gets elected.
 
Kanye Hasn’t Dropped Out. He’s Working to Get on the Ballot.
But this time may — at least for a moment — be different. According to multiple campaign professionals who spoke with Intelligencer, West took early steps last week toward getting his name on the ballot in Florida and other states as a third-party candidate running against Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, July 8, around the time West tweeted and deleted an image of a fetus at the six-month mark of gestation with the caption “these souls deserve to live,” I was connected with a source who had been approached to work for the rapper’s presidential campaign. The source, who asked not to be named, was a political operative who had experience in this kind of work. I was extremely skeptical — but after talking with this person and others, I was convinced that West (or someone close to him) was at least toying with a real-life plan to build a campaign operation.
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Kanye's not going to get anywhere. Even if he gets on the ballot in a few states, who the fuck is going to vote for him? Oklahoma? Seriously? Oklahoma is going to go to Trump.
 
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I sometimes think that he's trying to be contrarian, like a certain relative of mine who was once a Communist for Reagan.
 
DES MOINES, IA -- Only man in America torn between voting for President Donald Trump or Kanye West relieved to hear Kanye West has dropped out of the running for President.
 
Republicans in at least four states are helping Kanye West gain ballot access
In July, Trump retweeted an article that said Kanye could be trying to siphon Black votes from Biden, writing that it "shouldn't be hard" for West to do.

...
"It's hard not to feel like Republican operatives are using a mentally ill, very famous rapper who is not going to be president because they think for some reason that it's going to take Black votes away from Joe Biden," said Jesse Lehrich, a Democratic strategist who worked for Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016.

"To the extent that people are using him for their own political gain, it's pretty gross and I hope he gets whatever help he needs."

Last month, West sent a series of tweets that included a claim his family was trying to "lock me up."

His wife, Kim Kardashian West, said last month in an Instagram post that West has bipolar disorder and said that "his words sometimes do not align with his intentions."

...
In Wisconsin, after local media captured video of a woman delivering West's signatures Tuesday, Vice identified her as Lane Ruhland, a veteran elections lawyer in the state who has represented the Republican National Committee and advised the state Republican Party.
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As of August 5, KW has only qualified in OK, where one can pay $35,000 instead of collecting signatures. He's submitted petitions in AR, CO, IL, MO, OH, VT, WV, and WI, and he awaits signature verification in those states. After a lawyer challenged those in NJ, he dropped that effort.
 
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