politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
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.
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?
That kind of implication?
Yeah old people don't have to see the failures of their poor decision making skills. They lack the understanding that their ideas and ideals are based in a world that no longer exists.
I think once you get over 80 it is time to step aside and let the world move forward.
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.
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.
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).
And yet we have minimum age requirements. Why does your bullshit argument about voter autonomy not apply there?
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 wouldn't be a natural born American citizen and thus couldn't run.
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.
It would have prevented the Trump disaster and that's really all I care about.
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.
They are there because they were voted in.
Did you mistype something? That comment doesn't make any sense to me. Perhaps I am simply misunderstanding how it is written. Would you mind rewording, or explaining what you mean?
No that's mobile typing for you. Not on you at all.
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.
First past the post at work
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.
https://youtu.be/De4_ZqMwuOg?si=nDGmxBwiIWjbdB2i
This mindset is not conducive to a properly functioning democracy.