Kanye West has been dealt a huge blow in his bid to influence the presidential election.
The 43-year-old rapper was minutes late in bringing the requisite documents to register for the Wisconsin ballot paper and it has now been confirmed that he will not feature in this key state.
Republicans were hoping that Kanye would help split the black votes so that the Democrats' Joe Biden takes a hit in a state in which Donald Trump only just won last time around.
Kanye has been looking to run under his Birthday Party banner as an independent in states where he can mix it up during voting in November.
Wisconsin is seen as a key state in winning the presidential election but the election commission voted 5-1 to keep West and running mate Michelle Tidball off the ballot.
There had been complaints that Kanye's campaign workers had not delivered the 2,000 signatures required to get on the ballot, by the 5pm deadline on August 5.
Michael Curran, who is Kanye's campaign lawyer, said that the papers were brought to the commission's building just 14 seconds after deadline and were still accepted by officials there.
He argued that this meant it still constituted a timely filing but this argument has now been thrown out.
Such was the tight nature to the deadline, it was argued that while Kanye's campaigners were in the building at 5pm, by the time they had been taken to the right room and then organised the papers, it was 'several minutes' past the deadline before commission staff member Riley Willman was able to accept the papers.
Commissioner Robert Spindell, a Republican, pushed the panel to give West the benefit of the doubt.
He said that the coronavirus pandemic had made life harder for everyone and cited that the building being on lockdown as a reason why the deadline was narrowly missed.
He said that if the doors had been open, then the valuable seconds wouldn't have been lost.
Spindell argued: "We are talking a matter of seconds here."
The rest of the commission decided that 5pm is 5pm and the rules had to be adhered to, with commissioner Dean Knudson saying: "This is one of the closest call cases I've seen but consistency requires me to treat all candidates the same, regardless of their party or their colour or any other characteristics.
"I think the complainants have (presented clear) evidence that he was late."
Kanye has had a chaotic campaign so far, with his first event ending in tears and him hitting out at his wife Kim Kardashian in a quickly deleted Twitter rant.