Kanye West announced he was running for president back in July and he has since run into a number of roadblocks. The rapper is currently fighting to secure a spot on the ballot in many states, but has only managed to be successful in twelve. However, the rapper is not afraid to spend money to help his campaign.
According to his mandatory filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Kanye shelled out $6 million from his own pocket to loan to his campaign. Now, it’s been reported that half of that money was used just to gather ballot signatures.
According to a report from TMZ, the rapper enlisted a “small army” of folks to hit the ground and gather signatures that would secure a spot on the ballot in several states. The report states Kanye leaned on the petition organization Let The Voters Decide to round up a team and paid them anywhere between $3.5 and $4.5 million to collect signatures in just fifteen states.
Kanye reportedly spent the most amount of money trying to rack up signatures in Arizona but his efforts did not prove successful. The rapper dropped $1 million, resulting in 93,000 signatures in the state, only to have an Arizona judge bar him from appearing on the ballot. The rapper faced a similar situation in his hometown state of Illinois. While he only spent $30,000 on the state, the rapper was similarly removed from ballots after a judge found a number of the signatures to be “invalid.”
The news of Kanye spending an impressive amount of coin on gaining signatures for his campaign is the latest from the rapper, who has been making headlines the past few weeks. Not only did Kanye ask his fans to help him find a fraudulent employee on his payroll, but he posted a video of him peeing on his Grammy award and was also temporarily banned from Twitter for publicly sharing journalist’s phone number.