Over three-fourths of Americans think there should be a maximum age limit for elected officials, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey.
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.
I’m not overly convinced that such restrictions are truly necessary at scale. When we are dealing with “large” populations, these sorts of edge-cases begin to become extremely improbable. While they would indeed remain possible, I would argue that if they were to actually end up occurring, that would be as a symptom of a much more serious societal breakdown which would most likely indicate an imminent collapse. That being said, if there was to be some explicit restriction, I believe that it is sufficient to state that individual must be, at least, a naturalized citizen. There could also be some other clause added for the sake of ensuring that the individuals interests are in that of the nation’s – like the natural-born citizen clause in the U.S.A; however, I personally haven’t come to a decision on whether I agree with that, or not.
Plenty of things are edge cases and yet we still have laws for them.
These people are there from institutional failure, not merit or meaningful support if their citizens.
