Yes, VP Kamala Harris can certify the election results even if she’s a presidential candidate

Vice President Kamala Harris has secured the support of enough Democratic delegates to become her party’s presumptive nominee against Republican Donald Trump after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race. 

Harris, as sitting vice president, will play a key role in counting votes and announcing election results in January 2025. That led multiple VERIFY readers to ask if a vice president can certify the results of an election in which they are also a candidate. 

THE QUESTION

Can a vice president certify the results of an election in which they are also a candidate for president?

THE SOURCES

• 12th Amendment to the U.S Constitution
• U.S. Code
• Emily Berman, professor of law and constitutional scholar at the University of Houston
• Brennan Center for Justice

THE ANSWER

Yes, a vice president can certify the results of an election in which they are also a candidate for president.

WHAT WE FOUND

The vice president oversees the counting of Electoral College votes and announces the results. They can still do this if they are a presidential candidate and it’s happened multiple times throughout history.

Both the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and federal law say the president of the Senate, which is a role that’s filled by the vice president, oversees the count of electoral votes. 

It’s not uncommon for a sitting vice president to preside over an election in which they are a candidate, University of Houston law professor Emily Berman explained. She cited Al Gore presiding over his losing election in 2001, as well as Richard Nixon in 1961.

“But there have been times where the vice president has presided over their own victory,” Berman said. “George Herbert Walker Bush, the first president Bush, was the vice president during that election and he presided over his own electoral count victory.”

As for how much power the vice president has in the process, experts at the Brennan Center for Justice say their role in the electoral count process is “primarily ceremonial.” 

"All the vice president does is open the envelopes, take the paper out that the states then send in, hand it to someone else and then that someone else reads them aloud," Berman added.