A presidential and vice-presidential candidate can legally come from the same state, but the Twelfth Amendment makes it costly. Electors from that shared home state are barred from casting votes for both candidates, so the vice-presidential nominee typically forfeits an entire state’s worth of electoral votes. That is why major-party tickets almost always pair candidates from different states, and why the 2000 Bush-Cheney ticket quietly rearranged Dick Cheney’s residency before Election Day.
What the Twelfth Amendment Restricts
The restriction sits in one sentence of the Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804. When electors meet in their states to vote for president and vice president, “one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves.”1Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Twelfth Amendment In practice, each elector can vote for at most one candidate who lives in the elector’s own state. If both nominees on a ticket share that state, the elector has to pick one and leave the other off the ballot.
The language carried forward from Article II, Section 1, which used nearly identical wording back when each elector cast two votes for president.2Legal Information Institute. Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 Electoral College Count Generally The framers wrote it to keep any single large state from monopolizing the executive branch. Nothing in the Constitution stops a party from nominating two people from the same place; the penalty falls on the electors’ ballots, not on the nomination.
What Counts as Being From a State
The word doing all the work is “inhabitant.” Birthplace does not matter. What matters is where the candidate physically lives and intends to remain.
The leading federal case, Jones v. Bush, set out a two-part test: the candidate must have “physical presence within that state” combined with the “intent that it be his place of habitation.”3Justia Law. Jones v Bush, 122 F Supp 2d 713 (ND Tex 2000) Intent is where most challenges focus. A voter registration change or a new driver’s license helps, but those steps alone are not enough if the candidate keeps a primary home, family, and business ties in the old state. A half-hearted move risks being treated as a sham, which drops the candidate back into their original state for Twelfth Amendment purposes.
The Jones court also addressed a common objection: if the candidate wins, they will live in Washington, D.C., not the claimed home state. That does not destroy inhabitancy. The legal home is where the candidate intends to return, not where the job temporarily takes them.
What a Same-State Ticket Costs on Election Day
When a ticket wins a state where both candidates live, the electors from that state will almost certainly cast their presidential vote for the top of the ticket and leave the vice-presidential slot blank or vote for someone else. The vice-presidential nominee walks away with zero electoral votes from the shared home state.
In a comfortable election, that gap is meaningless. In a close one, it matters. Picture a ticket where both candidates live in a state worth 30 or 40 electoral votes. The presidential nominee still clears 270 and wins. The vice-presidential nominee, missing that entire block, falls short of 270 even though every other state’s electors voted for both. The presidency is settled. The vice presidency is not.
What Happens If the Vice President Falls Short
When no vice-presidential candidate reaches a majority of electoral votes, the Twelfth Amendment sends the choice to the United States Senate. The Senate picks between the two candidates with the most electoral votes. Unlike the House’s procedure for a deadlocked presidential race, individual senators each cast their own vote rather than voting by state delegation. A quorum requires two-thirds of all senators, and the winner needs a majority of the full Senate.1Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Twelfth Amendment
The obvious risk: a Senate controlled by the opposing party could install a vice president from a different ticket than the newly elected president. It has happened exactly once. In 1837, Martin Van Buren won the presidency comfortably, but his running mate Richard Mentor Johnson fell one electoral vote short after Virginia’s 23 electors refused to support him. The Senate elected Johnson 33 to 16.4U.S. Senate. The Senate Elects a Vice President The mechanism would work the same way if a same-state ticket triggered the shortfall.
How the 2000 Bush-Cheney Ticket Handled It
The closest the modern era has come to this problem was the 2000 Republican ticket. George W. Bush was the sitting governor of Texas. Dick Cheney had relocated to Texas to run Halliburton and was living there when he was chosen as the running mate. If nothing changed, Texas’s electors could not have voted for both, and the vice-presidential slot would have forfeited the state’s entire electoral haul.
Cheney re-established residency in Wyoming, where he had previously served in Congress. The steps he took read like a checklist for any candidate facing this situation. He registered to vote in Wyoming, withdrew his Texas voter registration, obtained a Wyoming driver’s license (voiding his Texas license), sold his Texas home, told the Secret Service his primary residence was in Jackson Hole, and retired from Halliburton.3Justia Law. Jones v Bush, 122 F Supp 2d 713 (ND Tex 2000)
Three Texas voters sued to block the arrangement. In Jones v. Bush, the federal district court dismissed the challenge, finding the plaintiffs lacked standing because they could not show an injury distinct from the general public’s interest in constitutional compliance. On the merits, the court found Cheney had established genuine Wyoming inhabitancy through both physical presence and clear intent to remain.3Justia Law. Jones v Bush, 122 F Supp 2d 713 (ND Tex 2000) The ticket collected all of Texas’s electoral votes without incident.
The lesson from Cheney’s example is that a same-state pairing is a solvable problem, but only if one candidate makes a genuine, documented move well before the electors meet. Anything less invites litigation and, if a court is not persuaded, the loss of a state’s electoral votes for the vice-presidential nominee.