Over three-fourths of Americans think there should be a maximum age limit for elected officials, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey.
The issue with enacting a mandatory age limit in a democratically elected government is essentially conceding to the idea that the voters are unable to determine for themselves whether an elected official is competent, or not. This has substantial, and serious implications.
There are plenty of perfectly capable and intelligent people until the day they die. People are individuals not the average of their demography.
For me, the main issue isn’t the increased risk of cognitive decline, it’s the fact that I share very few life experiences with people born before the invention of color tv, and someone who has another 5-15 years left will be less impacted by policy decisions than someone who’s going to be around for another 50-60 years. Octogenarians are not representative of the majority of the population and, in a representative democracy, I think that is important consideration.
I think once you get over 80 it is time to step aside and let the world move forward.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but how do we prevent this logic from being used to disenfranchise voters above the max age? If they’re not sharp enough to make decisions in the government, how are they sharp enough to vote?
I see two options, if we’re going to have limits on serving in Congress. One, they maintain the right to vote for the same reason 18 year olds do – they’re legally considered adults, and they deserve a say in matters that affect them, like wars. Two, people above the age can’t vote, but no law which passes can affect their day to day. They wouldn’t need to pay taxes, social security and Medicare payments would be guaranteed to not go down for them, and they generally aren’t held as autonomous adults in legal matters.
This is a can of worms, and needs to be carefully handled.
You mean like how most places don’t let you vote before you turn 18 because it is accepted that children have not developed the cognitive ability to make sound decisions in regards to electing officials?
This is a strawman argument. OP was talking about an age limit for elected officials, whereas you are now talking about age restrictions on the voters. Yes, we are both talking about cognitive decline in decision making; however there is a substantial difference between putting an age limit on those who can be in power vs. putting an age limit on those who can decide who is in power.
And yet we have minimum age requirements. Why does your bullshit argument about voter autonomy not apply there?
Why do you assume people like minimum age requirements either?
The Constitution is difficult to change. I’d get rid of the “natural born citizen” bit too.
You’re right, America would totally be better if we let preteens and foreign assets hold major legislative seats, totally wise outlook you’ve got on the topic here 🤡
In my opinion, you’re too naive to participate in this conversation constructively.
Out of curiosity, what is your justification for removing a natural born citizen clause?
You’re overthinking it. Babies can’t run for office and that’s a good thing.
I would argue, with a rather high degree of confidence, that this would never occur. If it did, it would certainly indicate a complete degredation in the core functions of the government, as well as the trust that the public has in its operation – I suspect that a revolution would be imminent. Furthermore, due its unstable nature, I would wager that it would be rather fleeting.
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Yeah. What if one of the Dunedain came out from the shadows with the sword that was reforged and ran for President? What then?
He was in love with an elf (Arawen) that was thousands of years old. Eowyn is not Aragon’s love interest. She had a crush on him and he rejected her.
There’s already a lower age limit though, so they can determine that anyone under the age of 35 is definitely not competent, but when it gets to people of older age is when it turns into an issue?
My argument is based on principle; therefore, it would be in opposition to any such restriction whose purpose is to “ensure” the competency of the candidate; however, it should be noted that there is a difference between such a restriction based on competency, and another based on, for lack of a better term, trustworthiness, e.g. a natural born citizen clause (this is not an argument for, or against the natural born citizen clause, I’m simply outlining the scope of my previous statement).
We already have restrictions on other government jobs about how old you can be. And we also have term limits on the office of the President.
It’s not breaking new ground or saying anything new that Congress and other elected officials should not be able to serve in excess of 10 years.
We already have restrictions on other government jobs about how old you can be.
For the sake of clarity, are you referring to the minimum age limits of U.S. government officials?
It’s not breaking new ground or saying anything new that Congress and other elected officials should not be able to serve in excess of 10 years.
My argument isn’t that it should be avoided because of it’s novelty, I’m saying that, in order to justify such rules, one must be of the belief that the voters are unable to determine the competency of who they elect. Given that a democracy is founded upon the idea of a government ruled by, of, and for the people, it is of paramount importance that the people be able to make such decisions for themselves.
The same logic that a person can’t serve in an office until they are a specific age is just a valid reason they can’t serve over a certain age. If constituents are supposed to be trusted in determining the competency of who they want to elect there should be no age limits at all.
President has a 2 term limit, so there is no reason Congress or Justices should not also be subject to predefined limits to how often they can hold an office, to say nothing of other elected officials down the line.
Given we have elected officials that are literally freezing while talking to reporters and yet would probably still win election after election? I don’t think the public cares if they are competent. They just care that their party symbol is next to their name so they vote for them.
Will that really change if we added age limits? They’ll just pick a successor and people will mindlessly vote for the new candidate instead.
We all know the Bidens, McConnells, Pelosi’s, etc aren’t really a single person. They have a whole team of people behind them who are making the decisions, doing the research, etc. You’re not really voting for the person as much as the administration that comes with that person.
For example a lot of people that were part of the Obama administration are part of the Biden. The person changed but the power structure more or less remains the same.
It would be a step in the right direction.
Something doesn’t need to be perfect to be better than we have today.
If we have a minimum age, we can have a maximum.
The question does still remain whether the public not caring about the competency level of a specific elected official is grounds to restrict their voter autonomy. An argument could certainly be made that voting in a less competent candidate could be a strategic move.
Reasonable restrictions can and should be made. You cannot elect a baby, you cannot elect a rock, you shouldn’t be electing someone who clearly isn’t medically capable of doing their job anymore.
Obviously people are picking incompetent election officials since we have quite a few, when you are given choices the selection of choices is important too. People are being given limited bad choices and choosing the lesser of evils. We have too many of these old timers who spend their days sleeping through important decisions or/and just being led by others.
People are being given limited bad choices and choosing the lesser of evils.
What’s interesting about this statement is that I interperet it as saying that the candidates that the voters are considering are pre-chosen by some independent third party that the voters have no control over. I would argue that, as it currently stands, in the U.S.A, for example, there is no such gatekeeper – the DNC or, GOP are not gatekeepers as the voters could choose to simply ignore them, and vote for an independent; however, from what I can tell, the issue certainly seems to be that the general public thinks that they only have two choices so they vote accordingly. This is quite possibly a symptom of the FPTP voting system, but I am not knowledgeable enough on the matter to say conclusively.
