Talk:Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution

presidential and vice-presidential candidates cannot reside in the elector's state

Please clarify and expand upon this aspect.

The article mentions this requirement was part of the original rules; yet later under the effects of the amendment it's implied the rule is new.

Also this rule (and any suggestions to change or keep it) are absent from the article.

Also, can't just an elector vote for president? Leaving the VP vote blank or some other person?

This re: the casual and non-informative mention in the press currently that if Trump chooses Rubio one must leave Florida. Or, I assume, they imperil Florida's votes? Is that strictly true?

(Please focus on improving the article; don't JUST reply to me - I'd like it for the article to provide the answer on this issue. Thanks)

CapnZapp (talk) 13:32, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

I've expanded one of the paragraphs in the article on this topic and added a citation; let me know if you think it needs clarification. Basically the original system had each elector cast two votes for president, and one of those votes had be for someone living in a different state from the elector; the 12th Amendment adapted that provision so that each elector now casts two votes, one for president and one for VP, and one of those individuals has to be someone who lives in a different state from that elector.

Strictly speaking, if a campaign nominated a presidential and VP candidate from the same state, this would only affect the votes from that home state. And you are correct that it would be constitutional, in a Trump-Rubio scenario, for Florida's electors to cast their presidential vote for Trump and their VP vote for someone other than Rubio (or just leave it blank). However, Florida's 30 electoral votes are almost certainly going to be necessary to put the Republican ticket over 270 electoral votes; if Rubio doesn't get 30 VP votes, then nobody would have a majority of VP votes and the VP election would be decided in the Senate, which might be D controlled and might choose a Democrat. These sorts of scenarios are why in practice this provision of the 12th amendment is treated as mandating that the two candidates on a ticket have different states of residence.

I don't think that there's ever been any serious campaign to change this provision, which would require going through the laborious constitutional amendment process. Campaigns often (thought not always) try to pick a president and VP from different regions of the country for geographic balance at any rate. --Jfruh (talk) 20:25, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. You provided an answer here on talk to my core question: Trump himself wouldn't need to lose any electoral votes (presumably every elector put in this situation would prioritize their vote for president). But of course risking your VP pick is not an inconsiderable argument for simply picking someone else (or at least asking your VP pick to leave your state). However, I'm not entirely sure your additional text and the article itself makes it clear what is at stake here (and that the presidency itself does not have to be jeopardized). Gotta read it again. CapnZapp (talk) 12:25, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to make it any clearer? I laid out the facts that if both presidential and VP candidates are from the same state, the electors from that state can't vote for both of them. Everything else is downstream of that, but we also want to be careful not to get into speculation about theoretical scenarios that we can't necessarily get sources on. --Jfruh (talk) 14:06, 24 June 2024 (UTC)