Kanye West files to be on Colorado’s ballot – what does it mean?
(KRDO) -- There are less than three months until the 2020 presidential election, and Kanye West could soon be competing against President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden in Colorado.
West cannot qualify to be on the ballot in every state because of differing deadlines, but he did provide $1,000 and nine names of people who pledge to be his electors should he win the state's nine electoral college votes.
So who provided the nine signatures Kanye West needed to get on the ballot in Colorado?
- Seth Jacobson is an unaffiliated voter from Denver. He's a former staffer for Cory Gardner's 2014 US Senate campaign and a former aide for Darryl Glenn's US Senate GOP campaign.
- Adam Johnson is a registered Republican from Centennial who is a former Colorado GOP Political Director.
- Matthew Zielinski is a registered Republican from Denver who served as a 2012 Republican write-in candidate for District 5 of the Colorado House of Representatives.
- Joseph Peters is a registered Republican from Denver who worked as an Assistant Attorney General at Colorado Attorney General's Office and was a former policy advisor for Colorado State Senate Republican Caucus.
- Other signatures include Kittrick MacLean, Shelley Kon, Emily Daniels, Mark Polk and Stanley Pence.
The Colorado Secretary of State's office still needs to review the signatures to verify they are registered Colorado voters.
KRDO will speaking with a political analyst about why there may be a push to get Kanye West on the November ballot and what it could mean for the upcoming election.
Until recently, west had previously supported president trump. We asked a political analyst from University of Colorado in Colorado Springs if other forces could be behind the push.
"If you have GOP operatives behind the effort to get him on the ballot, then you have to assume that the GOP thinks this would help Donald Trump in the election in Colorado and I think that's a reasonable conclusion," said Josh Dunn.
Kanye West is now among 17 others who have filed candidacy paperwork with the Colorado Secretary of State's Office to get on the ballot.
Dunn spoke to us about some of the theories about how the Republican party might think he could affect the election in Colorado and other states.
"You just have to assume that they think putting Kanye West on the ballot might draw some of the African American vote away from Joe Biden in November," Dunn said.
Kanye has heard that observation before, and has said he doesn't buy it,
"The most racist thing that's ever been said out loud is the idea that if Kanye west runs for president, I'm gonna split the black votes," he said in his South Carolina rally last month.
