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this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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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.
I agree, I oppose a minimum age on holding office as well.
Yes you can and do, thats why courts exist
Any bell curve across hundreds of millions of people has hundreds of thousands to millions of outliers.
Basically no one is average across a sufficiently large number of discriminators.
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.
Then that's an issue to be decided by ballot not discrimination
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.
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.
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.
For the sake of clarity, are you referring to the minimum age limits of U.S. government officials?
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.
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?
Both limits are stupid.
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 🤡
"Foreign assets"
So if somebody came at 5 years old, grew up their whole life in the US, was a citizen, and millions of Americans wanted to pick them as their president..
They shouldn't be accepted because they're a foreign agent?
In my opinion you're either a citizen or you're not. There should be no difference.
It's kind of what they built the country on, didn't they?
That, and slavery of course. But that's a different discussion.
I don't think many people would vote for preteens or foreign assets.
Running a campaign does not mean you win, and if you're unlikely to win, you're unlikely to get enough support to run.
Also foreign-born Americans can be elected to the legislative branch. Ted Cruz is a notable example.
Might wanna know what you're talking about before calling someone a clown.
Somebody said my name?
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.
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.
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
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.
Or it's a step in no direction and doesn't actually do anything. Realistically a step in no direction is a step in the wrong direction because of opportunity cost - time spent that could have been spent doing something useful.
The idea behind a minimum age is that there is a certain experience that you get as you age. 25 year olds simply don't have it. A max limit doesn't make sense using that reasoning - you don't lose experience as you age.
However, I agree that it's inconsistent to have one and not the other. I say remove both - let the people decide who they want to vote for.
Just because you don’t like to doesn’t make it a step in the wrong direction stranger.
You very much lose perspective with age. You nearest you to ask any of the people you listed what concerns a 25 year old they represent. I promise you they haven’t a clue.
Reasonable limits are reasonable for elected officials. I fly and we age out pilots for this very reason.
That makes sense until you remember Biden won the presidential election
To be fair, the election was between a 74 and 78 year old.
Not like there was much of a choice
Agreed. This is my fundamental issue with the constant call for term limits.
https://youtu.be/De4_ZqMwuOg?si=nDGmxBwiIWjbdB2i
I'm willing to concede to that accurate idea