We already have age limits at the lower end. Why are people so against age limits at the upper end?
We already have age limits at the lower end. Why are people so against age limits at the upper end?
Probably because some people age better than others? I’d argue term limits are probably a better solution to this problem. Although, people could also have the courtesy of resigning when they’re clearly too old for the job.
Frankly, I oppose term limits as well, if people want to keep electing a politician they like, they should be able to, and it’s really anti-democracy to insist they have to pick someone new after an arbitrary amount of time.
The issues with bad politicians are not coming from them being allowed to keep running, it’s that the systems around elections are so broken that bad politicians can keep winning.
This is exactly it. We need to move past first-past-the-post voting and do something like ranked-choice.
I’d say we need to go one further than ranked choice to multi member districts with ranked choice voting, that way even those groups who aren’t a majority still get represented but larger groups get a roughly proportional amount of representation.
Yah I think we should, it was literally just put in place because some people realized that a genuinely popular president could make serious positive changes that undermined extant power structures.
If a totalitarian president were to take control of the government enough to continuously win elections without popular support, they could certainly ignore a term limit, so all it really does is prevent the public from re-electing presidents they legitimately like.
Some people also young better than others, though. There are 18 year olds in the world I’ve have no problem voting for, if I could.
But yeah, a lot of age limit sentiment seems to be just straight up just ageism to me, as if every person becomes senile as soon as they turn 80, or even just 70 or 60, which just isn’t remotely true. Intelligence can remain sharp as ever, and sometimes elderly wisdom is indeed a thing. And every politician is surrounded by aids who will notice if something starts to go wrong.
I’d be sort of okay with a very high age limit, like 90, I guess, but on the whole I agree term limits are better anyway.
I disagree, even if you’re not senile you should be moving out of the way for younger generations. Wisdom doesn’t count for much if you’re completely out of touch with modern problems (see climate change, LGBTQ+ rights, “series of tubes” guy). Part of the reason millennials have been infantilized and poor for so long is that boomers won’t relinquish power in government or business.
There are plenty of older politicians who have good stances on those issues, and plenty of younger politicians with abhorrent views.
Sure, older politicians are more likely to have outdated views, but if the voters oppose those views than they should vote them out.
The issue of so many politicians being old and out of touch with the values of the citizens is merely a symptom of large problems in the electoral process and those issues would persist even if all the legislators had to be young.
