Kanye West barred from appearing on presidential ballot in Arizona after legal challenge

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Kit Heren4 September 2020

A judge has blocked Kanye West from appearing on the ballot in Arizona after a legal challenge from a voter in the state.

Lawyers for Rasean Clayton claimed including musician Mr West on the ballot would confuse voters, as he is registered as a Republican.

Mr West's lawyers said this was irrelevant as he is registered as a Republican voter in the state of Wyoming – whereas for the Arizona ballot he put himself down as an independent candidate for "BDY" or "Birthday Party.

Judge Scott McCoy said the voter who challenged Mr West’s bid to run for election in Arizona “established that the relative hardships favour him”.

Getty Images for Ralph Lauren

It is unclear if Mr West plans to challenge the ruling in Arizona, a key state where polls show mainstream candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden have similar levels of support.

It came a day after Mr West breezed past the threshold of 39,000 nominations required to appear on the ballot in Arizona, coming up with nearly 58,000 signatures.

He has already qualified to appear on the ballot for the November 3 vote in ten out of 50 states, including Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Tennessee and Utah.

But this is still too few to get the minimum 270 electoral votes a candidate needs to win the presidency.

Mr West has not qualified in Ohio, Montana, West Virginia, Wisconsin and some other states – although he has lodged legal challenges against some of those rulings.

Kanye meets with President Trump in the Oval Office
Getty Images

Meanwhile a Virginia judge ruled that Mr West's name should be taken off the state's presidential ballot after finding that 11 of the 13 pledges his campaign needed were "obtained by improper, fraudulent and/or misleading means".

Mr West has run an unconventional campaign since announcing his candidacy in early July.

Democrats have raised concerns that the musician's presidential bid is getting support from Republicans who are seeking to use him to draw votes away from Mr Biden.

David Bowen, a Democrat who represents Milwaukee, told CNN: "This is clearly a targeted effort by Republican operatives to cause confusion and problems for typically Democratic voters on Election Day."

"It's sad to see a popular music artist like Kanye be used as a pawn to trick his own people and fans to vote for a fake campaign."

Mr Trump has denied any involvement. He told reporters in August: "I like Kanye very much. I have nothing to do with him being on the ballot. I'm not involved."

Mr West has also denied working with the Republicans to harm Mr Biden's campaign.