#Kanye West submits over 9,000 extra signatures for Ohio presidential ballot

Kanye West has submitted nearly 10,000 additional signatures beyond what is required in Ohio to appear on the presidential ballot, a spokesperson for Ohio’s secretary of state confirmed to The Post.

The billionaire rap icon, who launched his independent presidential bid last month, needs 5,000 valid signatures of registered Ohio voters in order to make it onto the state’s ballot.

Instead, he submitted 14,886.

Along with the signatures, West also filed declarations of candidacy for both himself and his vice presidential candidate Michelle Tidball and a list of presidential electors for the state’s general election, the spokesperson said.

Tidball is a Wyoming-based spiritual coach who West tapped as his running mate when announcing his candidacy last month.

Getting on the ballot in the buckeye state is not something that the campaign views as an easy feat.

“It’s a challenge. Last-minute big-dollar efforts seem especially vulnerable” of falling short in Ohio, one West campaign operative told New York Magazine Monday.

The operative pointed to Jon Heavey, who ran for governor in the state in 2018 but failed to successfully petition himself to get on the ballot as a Democrat or independent. Heavey spent over $1 million on the late effort.

On Tuesday, West’s campaign withdrew their petition to appear as an independent presidential candidate on New Jersey’s presidential ballot.

The move came after the campaign’s petition to get on the state’s ballot was challenged by an election attorney who accused the sneaker-mogul-turned-politician’s paperwork of containing fraudulent signatures.

The legal challenge claimed that of the 1,327 signatures West’s campaign submitted for consideration, 600 were fake.

Excluding those fraudulent signatures left West with under the state’s minimum of 800 required signatures.

Without acknowledging the charges of faking some signatures, an unidentified representative of the rapper’s campaign said in an email to a judge handling the complaint that they would not challenge it.

“At this time, Kanye 2020 has no further option than to regrettably withdraw from New Jersey and cease further efforts to place Mr. West’s name on the New Jersey ballot,” the email to the judge reads.

“I will consider this email as a request for a withdrawal of your petition to be placed in nomination for the President of the United States in the State of New Jersey,” the judge replied.

West has until this week to get on the ballot in the critical state of California, where he needs just under 197,000 signatures by Friday evening.

If he cannot get on the ballot in the Golden State, it will have become mathematically impossible for West to assume the presidency in 2020, according to an analysis of the electoral map by Forbes.

As of the first week in August, West has already forfeited 225 Electoral College votes due to missed deadlines. California has 55 electoral votes, making it a must-win for the rapper.

West has qualified to be on the ballot in Oklahoma and has submitted signatures to appear on the Illinois and Missouri ballots.

He is also working to get on the ballot in West Virginia.

With Post wires