As far as the Federal Election Commission is concerned, Mr. West is an official candidate as of Thursday.
In a normal year, we would not be writing about a celebrity’s unconfirmed candidacy for an office for which he is too late to get on the ballot in some states. We don’t even know if the documents filed with the Federal Election Commission under his name this week are actually from him, because the F. E. C. doesn’t verify the legitimacy of the information in such filings.
But this is 2020, and random pieces of knowledge that you never thought you’d need are suddenly of interest. Remember last month when the Third Amendment — yes, that Third Amendment, the one about quartering soldiers — was trending on Twitter?
So let’s talk about campaign filing procedures. Why not?
If you’ve spent the past couple of weeks blissfully unaware of the Schrödinger’s cat-like Kanye campaign, we’ll catch you up quickly. Earlier this month, Mr. West, the rapper, designer and entrepreneur, said he was renouncing his past support for President Trump and running for president himself. Less than two weeks later, an adviser said he wasn’t running after all.
Then Mr. West, or at least someone purporting to represent him, filed two forms with the F. E. C.: a statement of organization on Wednesday, and a statement of candidacy on Thursday. An F. E. C. spokesman confirmed that the agency had received the filings.
These are “the normal steps that serious candidates take,” said Michael Beckel, research director at Issue One, a campaign watchdog group. And technically, they do make Mr. West an official presidential candidate — along with 1,144 other people as of Thursday afternoon, according to the F.
