© 2026 ABC News

All attendees at West's North Charleston event were asked to sign a COVID-19 liability release form, and to social distance and wear a mask.

A week after an adviser to his campaign reportedly told a media outlet that West was going to drop out of the race, a source with knowledge of West's presidential bid told ABC News that the campaign is now working in multiple states to gather signatures, and that the two-week-old campaign is \"maturing and growing.\"

According to the source, the team will be announcing several more campaign events, including one in New York.

\"PHOTO:
Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images, FILE
PHOTO: Kanye West and then-President-elect Donald Trump speak with the press after their meetings at Trump Tower, Dec.r 13, 2016 in New York.
>

Last week, West paid the $35,000 registration fee to get on the ballot in Oklahoma. He will need several more states to be able to reach the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the presidency. There are currently only 306 electoral votes up for grabs in states where the filing deadlines have yet to pass.

Bre Maxwell, a Democratic operative in South Carolina, told ABC News that West's bid for president may ignite people like West, 43, who registered to vote for the first time earlier this month, to vote this election.

To vote click below https://t.co/LRJ8hC5rGi#2020VISION pic.twitter.com/MJOVGYYYvQ

— ye (@kanyewest) July 9, 2020

\"He may not even take away from Joe Biden, but I think what Kanye will probably be able to do is ignite a voting bloc that probably wasn't going to vote for Joe Biden -- the young black millennial who doesn't care about politics or who's not involved in politics but they are involved with music.\"

\"PHOTO:
Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
PHOTO: Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a "Build Back Better" Clean Energy event on July 14, 2020, at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del.
>

But Maxwell said West's bid for president concerns her because she feels that the focus should be on rallying behind Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and on supporting Democratic candidates lower down on the ballot.

\"We need all the votes out of people we can get to support Joe Biden,\" Maxwell said. \"We've got to get rid of Donald Trump and his administration. We've got to flip the Senate. We've got to keep the House, because that's the only way we're going to be able to make sure America is great.\"

ABC News' Quinn Scanlan and Mark Osborne contributed to this report.

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