Judge upholds decision to deny West spot on ballot in Wis.

MADISON, Wis. — Rapper Kanye West does not qualify to be on the presidential ballot in battleground Wisconsin after missing a filing deadline, a judge ruled late Friday, upholding a bipartisan decision by the state elections commission.

The decision is likely to be rapidly appealed to the conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court. That court put the mailing of absentee ballots on hold Thursday while it considers whether Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins should be added.

Donald Trump narrowly won Wisconsin in 2016. Polls show it is tight again this year. State law requires ballots to be mailed by Sept. 17 to more than 1 million voters who have requests on file. There is also a Sept. 19 deadline in federal law for mailing ballots to overseas and military voters.

Those deadlines could force the Wisconsin Supreme Court, controlled 4-3 by conservatives, to act within a matter of days on who should be on the ballot. The state elections commission has argued that printing new ballots this late would not only be expensive but could also cause “confusion and disorder” and may not even be feasible.

In West’s case, Brown County Circuit Judge John Zakowski ruled that the state elections commission was correct in determining that the musician narrowly missed a 5 p.m. filing deadline to get on the presidential ballot.

West had argued that the deadline did not expire until 5:01 p.m. and that regardless of the timing, commission staffers still accepted the papers. The commission voted that West had missed the deadline either by a few seconds or several minutes.

According to the lawsuit, commission staffers should have unlocked the building’s doors at 4:30 p.m. to accommodate late-arriving filers. But the commission’s building has been locked since the coronavirus pandemic began. West’s campaign workers had to call the commission shortly before 5 p.m. to get them to unlock the doors.

A commission staff member said West’s representatives didn’t place the nomination papers on the counter until 5:01 p.m. By the time the papers were organized and officially accepted, it was several minutes past the 5 p.m. deadline.