Kanye West kicks off 1st presidential campaign event in South Carolina

The state deadline to file as an independent candidate is Monday.

Kanye West kicked off his first presidential campaign event in North Charleston, South Carolina, Sunday evening as the state’s deadline to file signatures as an independent candidate approaches.

The state’s deadline for signatures was moved from Wednesday to noon on Monday due to a state of emergency declared amid the coronavirus pandemic. South Carolina does not allow write-in candidates on the ballot.

On Saturday, West had tweeted for supporters to “please sign up to put me on the ballot in South Carolina.” The state requires 10,000 signatures to be ballot-eligible.

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

A source with knowledge of West’s presidential bid told ABC News that the campaign is currently working in multiple states gathering signatures and describes the two-week old campaign as “maturing and growing.”

According to the source, the team will be announcing several more campaign events, including one 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 reach the 270 electoral votes 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.

“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.”

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 for president, and Democratic candidates down the ballot.

“We need all the votes out of people we can get to support Joe Biden. 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 gonna be able to make sure America is great. … But in order for us to have a more perfect union, we’ve got to make sure that we can get all the votes divided, we can flip the Senate, and we keep the house.”

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