I just saw Boris Johnson’s photo in the paper yesterday and realized that if you dyed his hair orange, he is a Trump look-a-like. He is a natural born American. And apparently no prominent Republican is interested in being on the Trump ticket. But Johnson is just mad enough. So why not a Trump-Johnson ticket.
I know this is probably in jest, but the Twelfth Amendment is why not.
" But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States."
BoJo is not eligible to be president so he can’t be VP either.
To expand on jz78817’s post, it’s not enough to be born in the United States. A candidate has to have also resided in the United States for at least fourteen years. Johnson, of course, resides in the United Kingdom.
It’s not just his hair; his skin isn’t orange enough.
I believe Boris renounced his US citizenship a few years ago.
As of last year he said he was “going to.” Sorry, I can’t find the link I read the other day, but it was discussing how there is no public record (?) of his renouncement, so either he did it very recently or a long time ago, and his statements suggest the latter isn’t the case.
This Wikipedia page doesn’t list him, and the Talk page suggests that he doesn’t yet qualify.
All the way back in 2015. For tax (unofficially) and patriotic reason (officially).
The US courts have been quite generous in allowing people to un-renounce their citizenship. You have to work at it pretty hard. He could get his back in a few weeks.
It’s the residence thing that’s the killer.
Are British Prime Ministers allowed to be U.S. Vice-Presidents?
I was going to comment that a first name of “Boris” probably wouldn’t help in getting votes, especially among older voters who remember the Soviet Union. But then, after 9/11, who would have thought that someone named “Barack Obama” could get elected?
Lost in editing: This was supposed to reference how hard it was to permanently lose your citizenship with no possibility of getting it back.
Another possible “gotcha”. Where would Boris’s residence be if returned to the US? (Actually time traveling to meet the necessary residency requirement.)
If he lives in his birth state of NY, this creates a problem. The electors for NY cannot vote for both a POTUS and Veep from NY. (Mistakenly said that both can’t be from the same state in general. It only restricts the electors from the same state.)
So, in the oh-so-likely (!) chance that Trump wins NY and Johnson is his Veep also living in NY, then the electors have a bit of problem. They can vote for Trump. But they can’t vote for Boris. In a tight electoral race, this might mean the Democratic Veep nominee could win.
If the various electors actually vote for both of them, SCOTUS might toss out both ballots and Trump could end up losing.
And who said keeping the Electoral College is stupid?
The interesting question for me is Walken After Midnight’s thought. Assuming BoJo had lived in the US these past 14 years (side question: how much actual living there is required? 6 months of the year? Could he take a trip outside the US once a week for the entire period?), would he actually be prevent from becoming an MP, and eventually, the PM of the UK? I imagine he has to live (again, requirements) in the district he would represent in Parliament, but I don’t know enough about the UK electoral system to know if that’s really true (I seem to recall a number of Sinn Fein members were all elected from jail, and since their cells were next to each other presumably they were “living” in the same district, which didn’t stop them from getting elected).
Hey, in 1952 we elected a guy called Eisenhower.
Bush and Cheney solved that problem by having Cheney establish residency in Wyoming.
He was a congressman from Wyoming 21 years before he became VP. Maybe some wrangling was done but it wasn’t an arbitrary choice coming from nowhere.
If you’re British citizen (or an Irish citizen, or a qualifying Commonwealth citizen) you can stand as an MP*. There’s no requirement to live in the constituency. In theory, to become Prime Minister, you wouldn’t even have to be an MP, but that’s not very likely these days. I’m not sure how Bobby Sands et al got elected while incarcerated - perhaps the law has changed since then.
- there’s some other caveats: must be at least 18, mustn’t be an undischarged bankrupt, can’t be a serving civil servant, police officer or member of the military, not a member of the House of Lords. There’s a few others, but on the whole it’s quite open really.
With Johnson himself being one of many examples which can illustrate this. His constituency, Uxbridge and South Ruislip, is on the western edge of Greater London, whereas he lives somewhere in Islington in north London. See the maps here and here or here. There are at least five other constituencies separating them. While there was a bit of comment about him having no connections at all with his constituency when he stood there at the last election, few thought this a huge problem and it had no obvious effect on the result.
Sure. Why not?
As long as they meet the Constitutional requirements, there’s no way to stop them as long as the voters are OK with it. It isn’t like we have a double-secret Constitution which says “NO BRITS” on it.