Kanye West Campaign Paid $10 A Signature To Meet Ballot Deadline

CHICAGO — With time running out to get Kanye West's presidential campaign on the Illinois ballot, the rapper's get-out-the-vote operation called in the "A-Team."

That's what Zach Livas called the band of Libertyville-based petition circulators he travels with collecting signatures to help candidates and public referendums earn spots on ballots.

"We got called in emergency," Livas said. "They needed extra signatures. I guess they weren't getting 'em where they were. It was a day-and-a-half before the deadline. And we're like the A-team."

The crew fanned out to collect as many signatures in Waukegan and drove through the night to Springfield, where the nominating petitions were due Monday.

Livas' twin brothers, Bobby and Albert Livas, got in the signature-collection business after a chance encounter with a guy on California beach offering the chance to make quick cash.

"The guy said he'd give us $6 a signature for passing a jail reform petition," Bobby Livas said. "We went to Natural History Museum and got 100 signatures each in four hours."

Two years later, the Livas brothers collect signatures for mayoral and presidential candidates and to get initiatives including marijuana legalization and stem-cell research on election ballots across America.

Zach Livas, a former car dealership finance guy, said working on the front line of democracy isn't for crybabies.

"Politics and religion really irk people. We get people trying to block us, saying, 'Don't you dare sign that. They'll sell your information to China,' just because they're on the other side," he said. "It's a crazy game. I was in the car business for 15 years, so I thought I had thick skin. But you get into this business, and you'll hear people say some wild s---, bro,"

The rush job collecting signatures for the West campaign in the state capitol was a wild ride.

They fanned out across Springfield, posting up at the Hy-Vee across from the Illinois Board of Education office and a nearby WalMart, where Bobby Livas got temporarily detained on a 7-year-old, out-of-state warrant for trespassing while collecting signatures.

"We're usually pretty aggressive when the police try to violate our First Amendment rights to circulate petition. We don't like it," Zach Livas said.

"Sometimes it takes getting arrested to make sure that doesn't happen. You should be allowed to collect signatures anywhere there's an open public gathering space. I guess (in Springfield) you have to leave if they don't want you there."

Locals in the state capitol had mixed reactions when asked to sign the petition to get West on the presidential ballot.

"We were getting a good response, I think, because people seem jarred by what's happening on the news with Trump and Biden. People seem confused," Zach Livas said. "Of course, certain demographics told us to go kill ourselves because they don't like that Kanye's a rapper and this or that."

But that kind of talk didn't deter the A-Team.

"We just focused on the liberal, younger demographic," Zach Livas said. "And we got signatures."

Each signature was golden — and not just for the 21-time Grammy winner with his sights set on the White House.

Typically, petition circulators earn around $5 for each signature. Candidate West's last-minute bid for the Illinois ballot amid the coronavirus crisis paid a premium — $10-bucks a pop.

The crew of independent contractors collected more 2,000 signatures for the West campaign in Illinois, Zach Livas said. Their contribution helped West's campaign earn a spot on the ballot with around 600 signatures to spare.

Election experts that's not enough to secure a ballot position if someone decides to challenge his petitions. So far, that hasn't happened, keeping the rapper's 2020 presidential ambitions alive.

On Wednesday, West asked his Twitter followers if he should postpone his campaign.

"Y’all want me to run [or] nah???”, he wrote in a tweet that was later deleted.

The A-Team got word the rapper's presidential campaign isn't over, yet.

On Thursday, their services were requested in Missouri, where deadline to submit petition signatures is 5 p.m. Monday.

So, the Livas brothers got the crew together and headed to St. Louis.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series, "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots.

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