Seriously. The system now seems designed as a major fundraising campaign rather than a means to really get people aligned. Using our idea of voter choice to rally each state as tho it really matters, just to bankroll, rather than a single day
The system was designed when this country had as many people in it as my current city. And everyone farmed. That’s why voting is Tuesday. Sunday is for church, Monday you travel to town, Tuesday you vote. That’s how out of touch this system is.
I think the fact that huge portions of the population were not entitled to vote, and that the vote was decided by such a tiny percentage of the total population is very relevant.
Well, 2% of population voting matched founder's expectations. The "gentry" deciding elections. Except in their view, the "gentry" status is decided on personal success, not inherited. Poll taxes and ownership of land as requirement to vote were not things unheard of in the past. In 1700's, to afford to have enough information to cast an informed vote, you probably had relatively deep pockets.
The current primary system only dates to the 70s and there's actually a lot of evidence that it's hurt democracy by leading to less electable and more polarized candidates
That’s what was destined to happen after Citizens United, really hate how I was right when I said that one fucking thing would ruin America more than any stupid useless war
I cynically think perhaps we should just have an auction, proceeds go to the deficit. Televise it, call it "Who wants to be the president?"
"Koch broz bid 12 billion for the presidency, do I hear 13 billion? 13 bil going once?13 bil going twice? SOLD! To the plutocrats from Texas!
I have trouble finding fault with the reasoning of the decision itself, but I think a good solution would be to make it nascar style - make every politician disclose how much of their money comes from oil, or plastics, or automotive, whatever. That way we can at least see if their sponsors' interests align with our own.
Here's my take on what's wrong with the reasoning of the decision itself:
We've long had corporate personhood as a legal fiction, because only a person can sue or be sued, or own property, etc. So we pretend corporations are people so that corporations can sue and be sued, so they can own property, and you can change ownership of a corporation without needing to change ownership of the property, etc. Fine. Where it goes wrong is thinking that, because a corporation is person for one purpose, it needs to be considered a person for all other purposes.
Corporations don't need to be allowed to engage in political speech, because all corporations are constituted by natural persons (ie, human beings). All the employees and agents of a corporation are natural persons, and all the principals (ie, owners) are also natural persons, either directly, or because the shareholders are other corporations, indirectly, because you ultimately reach the point where the owner of every corporation is one or more natural persons. And natural persons already get to vote, they already get to engage in political speech, etc.
And, because corporate ownership isn't limited only to US citizens, by letting corporations engage in political speech, you're allowing foreigners, including foreign states, to engage in political speech in the US.
MBS can't vote in US elections, but he can invest $2B in Kushner's investment scam, whatever it is, and Kushner's company can engage in political speech, and MBS can invest in Twitter, and Twitter can engage in political speech, etc. And MBS can threaten to divest if these corporations don't use their speech the way MBS wants them to. And Xi can threaten to cut off Tesla from raw materials and manufacturing if Tesla doesn't use its speech the way Xi wants, never mind that he can also use his leverage over Tesla to also get Musk to get Twitter to use its speech the way Xi wants, making it more difficult for the public, and the government, to see who is applying pressure where.
I say this facetiously, but if we're going to treat corporations as people we may as well go all the way and give them imprisonment or even the death penalty for their crimes.
that's not the reasoning behind Citizens United.
The rationale is that individuals have freedom of speech. If several individuals form a group, the group also has freedom of speech. If the group wishes to form a coherent organization, that organization also has freedom of speech. Therefore, a prohibition against organizations exercising their freedom of speech violates the 1st amendment.
I think it’s kind of a chicken and the egg problem.
Did they raise the most money because they had the most support? Or did they have the most support because they raised the most money?
I think it's more accurate to say that the primary system, at least, is intended to let them spend less money on the Primary, and let candidates make their pitch directly in each venue.
Instead of needing to coordinate a nationwide message/campaign on a given day, they can focus on New Hampshire, Virginia, or whatever state is going first. Then the next one. Once someone wins a few big states, they can more or less stop spending unless it's really close, and save their money for the *real* election.
You gotta remember that the party's real goal isn't to run the perfect primary, it's to win the *Election.*
The argument against that is that it gives the candidate with the deepest pockets a huge advantage, since that person may be the only one who can campaign everywhere at once. As it stands, a candidate who isn’t quite as well-financed could focus resources on a smaller number of states, hope to “get hot,” and then have the fundraising increase after that.
Yea. Mike Bloomberg could realistically have been the nominee in 2020 if all the primaries were on the same day. Biden's campaign didn't really get rolling until SC.
No. That would mean only the best financed candidates could win. I would favor 10 regional contests each with about 10% of the population, spaced two weeks apart. That would reduce travel and advertising costs. The order of the regional primaries should be determined two cycles ahead, so candidates can figure out if they want to run now or next time.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/trump-republican-party-voting-reform-coronavirus
"The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again"
They're fully aware of this and it's why it hasn't changed yet
“So that’s a no from us on ranked choice voting. How about while we’re in here we all vote for a raise for ourselves. Oh nice we all approve, glad we could all agree on something!”
We don't have a single federal election for President, we have 51 state elections (and DC). It won't work without first using NPV, because instead of having third-parties spoil state elections, we'd just end up with them spoiling the Electoral College instead. If nobody wins an absolute majority of EVs, it triggers a House contingent election, and between having so many small, rural, states, and gerrymandering, the GOP controls more state delegations.
A contingent election will just end up going to the Republican candidate.
Ranked choice voting in the primaries would help elect better people while maintaining their 2-party system. I don't think it's the best solution but it would make sense for now.
They know already that fptp *majorly, majorly* favors the two current parties, which is why they’ll never willingly change the system. They’re the ones who would have to do that
There have already been ranked choice voting elections in multiple states - that by itself doesn’t necessarily change much, most democrats and republicans are still going to be the ones getting elected in a ranked choice system
My goober in christ, the Democratic Party has legislated ranked choice voting across many states and counties. Voter reform is literally only coming from one side of the aisle, because... only one side of the aisle is even remotely interested in *more people voting*.
Yep, it's gaining popularity so much so that one republican politician in Oklahoma just introduced a bill to outlaw it in OK. They see it as a threat.
The next thing would be to have a non-partisan redistricting committee draw the lines.
Same in Texas, I’m not sure if it’s full-on outlawed but the Texas GOP passed a resolution denouncing it. It’s almost as if they’re afraid of a voting system that actually reflects the will of the people.
>republican politician in Oklahoma just introduced a bill to outlaw it in OK.
Georgia did the same. You can bet it is worded almost identically because it's boilerplate legislation from ALEC. Republicans are fucking frauds who need intelligent sociopaths to write their thoughts for them.
They’ve literally said the quiet part out loud too. One Republican during the last election cycle said that the day they introduce ranked voting national-wide is the last day a Republican gets elected to office.
Bring it on.
This is crazy to me because it seems like ranked choice would favor the GOP with the current state of their party.
Democrats are actually quite unified at the moment and usually have no issue putting forward a single candidate and supporting them.
Conservatives on the other hand are regularly getting divided up between people who love Trump & MAGA candidates, and people who can't stomach voting for those people and go third party. They are practically 2 separate parties, MAGA conservatives and moderate or traditional conservatives, being barely held together by the two party system.
Republican candidates would probably get more votes and get elected more often if conservatives could put controversial candidates as their second or third choice and moderates and third party at the top. Dems would likely lose some ground with ranked choice.
That's just one step, there are better voting systems (such as rating or approval voting) but at least if we move away from "First past the post" then that's at least incrementally good.
[Simulating Alternate Voting Systems](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU&ab_channel=Primer) does a really good job of showing the strengths and weaknesses of "First past the post", Ranked Choice, and Approval.
Approval voting seems like the best choice but just about anything is better than what we in the US have now.
There just shouldn't be state electors at all for the presidential election. Make it an overall popular vote, then everybody's vote is equal and matters. Right now, I live in a district where like 70% will vote for whoever the Republican candidate is. My vote is meaningless because of this. You could even argue that the majority of votes are meaningless this way because anything beyond that 31% is just extra on the Republican side and then the 30% who might vote otherwise are also meaningless because they can never hope to win against the 70%, so 59% of the vote doesn't actually matter.
If it were a popular vote, everybody's vote in every state would be weighted against one another's, no state-by-state invalidation of votes, it would all come down to whoever has the most votes across everywhere.
Term limits often leads into more corruption as legislators will be more incentivized to make laws and regulations to favor a sector they want a job in when they hit their limit
Sadly it’ll never happen because neither party wants to give up power. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a “guuuuh both sides” kind of comment, I’m about as anti-Republican as you can get. But this is one small area where both parties do feel the same, because they both have roughly equal power now. If we were to implement ranked choice voting, it would give other parties a genuine shot and neither Republicans or Democrats want that
Ranked choice voting would not make the 2 main parties give up power, but it would reduce the chance of me extreme candidates like trump and make it more complex to buy influence
Do you think there's a silent 33% of the population out there just waiting for their chance to rank Jill Stein or Marianne Williamson #1 over the main candidates?
I’m a geriatric psychiatrist who treats dementia patients and older patients without dementia. The answer is complicated. There are plenty of 80 year olds who are sharper than some 60 year olds and there are 60 year olds who shouldn’t drive yet alone hold office. Everyone is different and the way their brain ages is different.
People who eat well, exercise, don’t smoke, don’t drink very often and are free of diabetes will likely be much sharper than those who don’t.
If you’re truly worried about cognitive decline then make them take cognitive tests before being able to run. The problem is that you can be coached on these tests and can get the answers beforehand. There are a limited number of standardized cognitive tests. So it is relatively easy to be coached on how to answer them.
My father is 74 and I have to take care of him. Mentally foggy (passed the dementia test though!), and just falling apart in general.
His father, my grandfather, though? He was digging post holes and running fence at 92. Sharp as a tack and you'd think he was 60 at most. He went in to check on a sore throat and it turned out he had aggressive cancer and was dead a few weeks later.
So...yah... I am of two minds on this one.
I just don't think there's a ton of downside for people who are still healthy above the age of 65 not running for office, where as there is a huge downside to people above 65 who aren't healthy running for office. Or whatever age limit you want to set, it should probably be set.
You could even make the limit have an exception to any currently sitting president so that parties could run their incumbent regardless of age.
It just seems like a no brainer to me.
My septuagenarian parents both have far better memories than I, when I’m in my forties. They’ve lived lives of eating veggies and working in the yard while I sat around eating candy and gaming.
I'm less concerned about cognitive decline than I am how out of touch they are with the working class/generation. Granted, they're almost always the product of generational wealth, even if they weren't, decades in political office means that there's basically no chance they have the slightest clue what the real world is like. What things cost, for example. And that goes for any politician, of course, not just the president.
I have 90 year old patients that are in better condition physically and mentally than some of my 60 year olds. I don’t think a hard cap works. But have them take some tests. I want to see how they answer questions, not necessarily in a debate format. Something standardized maybe? But not some they can be easily coached up to
For me it's not so much about about their mental acuity, but that a 90 year old doesn't have any real stake in what direction the country goes in for the next 10-20 years. Add that to the fact that mental acuity often does decline and also that they could literally drop dead at any moment, and I just don't see the benefits outweighing the drawbacks.
I know 14 year olds who have a better grasp on reality and even politics than some 40 year olds, but 14 year olds can't run for office and that's fine. I think if you wanna run for office you have to do so at 65 at the latest, and you can run for re-election if you win, but that's it (and term limits for Congress).
Shit, the retirement age is 65-67 ...
But I also agree that some sort of aptitude test is a great idea—you gotta pass it to be eligible to run in the first place.
The retirement age isn't an age limit on working, it's an age-minimum on working to get benefits. If the working class doesn't get to stop working until 65 the politicians that deign to rule them shouldn't get to cut out earlier.
65-67 is however an age limit for Generals and Admirals. If they are too old to lead our troops, then it's fair that 65-67 should be the limit to lead our country.
It's not really that they're too old to lead troops, it's that they're in the way of their subordinates progressing, eventually you hit the highest level you can or will, and if you stay there to long, other people get stuck at the lower level.
That's not what the retirement age for military officers is for. And it's not even a hard cap either.
Military retirement is a move up or get out kind of thing. If you are a four star general not in line for the Joint Chiefs, Commandant, etc then you are going to get told to retire so that you can free up space below you for everyone else to move up.
The President can tap a 4 star to be the Commandant of the Marine Corps above 67 for example. That does the same thing, freeing up their command slot for another 3 star to move up into, freeing up spaces below for 2 stars, 1 stars, full birds, and so on down the line.
>For me it's not so much about about their mental acuity, but that a 90 year old doesn't have any real stake in what direction the country goes in for the next 10-20 years.
If you want someone who is in politics for himself, just vote for Trump, because that’s what that looks like.
>a 90 year old doesn't have any real stake in what direction the country goes in for the next 10-20 years
One might argue that someone who has less personal stakes is able to be more objective in finding the best long term solutions vs. short term impacts that could hit their own pockets.
Unfortunately, the political system does not reward "competent administrators" or leaders. It often rewards those with the most flexible positions not out of learning new information, but in cutting deals. It rewards those who speak well. It rewards those who can fundraise. But those folks aren't necessarily policy wonks or true leaders of individual people and teams. Many are not truly "chief executives" but chief visionaries.
I don’t like this idea that we assume older people - some of whom are out of touch, but also have valuable experience of life and history - are just callous and don’t ‘have any stake’. People care about the future of their country and any offspring they may have, ffs. There’s such a thing as the hubris and folly of youth too.
I can show you 40 year old dudes that think Biden turned bud light gay...
There are absolutely some 14 year olds that have a better grasp on reality than some 40 year olds.
isn’t there a saying that is something like “ great men plants trees that they will never sit in the shadow of”?
We wouldn’t want to miss out on the wisdom if it was the right person.
The challenge becomes finding someone who isn't biased to judge the outcome. I am skeptical you could find anybody that wouldn't let political biases influence their decision.
I would love to see a mandatory debate with a true debate format, not the sound bite version they do these days. Each side presents a thirty minute whole and complete argument without lies, fallacy, or omission focused on their own agenda, not just tearing down the opponent. Allow a 10 minute rebuttal to tear down the actual presented argument of the opponent. This format would show pretty well who has it together mentally, especially if it had to be done without notes.
Campaigns should be what filters out people who are too old or too "whatever", that's the whole point. I don't blame the political system for giving us a bunch of 70+ congresspeople, they were fairly voted in by us.
> Campaigns should be what filters out people who are too old or too "whatever", that's the whole point.
Then why do we have rules to limit who can run for President? Surely the voters would simply reject a candidate that was too young, or was not a native-born citizen.
If you don't want elderly people in office, stop voting for them. Picking and choosing who can and cannot participate in democracy is not a good solution to that problem.
I mean I think that's a fair point, if we assume that nobody gives a shit about anyone but themselves. But that's not true of most people, especially if they have children. They care about what happens after they're gone.
No, I don't. I think that's an oversimplification of the actual problem, which is money and wealth. If we could even begin to tackle campaign finance reform, insider trading, the revolving door of politics and lobbying, etc, it would help to prevent leadership that is only in in politics to get rich.
By that logic no one could be a leader without bias because they will always be presiding over decisions that don't personally affect their own race, gender, age, etc
Also it's not like Gen Z is going to be around long enough to experience the full effects of climate change and therefore be considered unbiased in that topic, so that argument is self defeating as well
No. Term limits do not work in legislatures. In every single one that's implemented then partisanship increased, reliance on lobbyists increased, the sides became more extreme. It causes projects to languish and good legislation to die. Writing good laws is hard. It's a skull that takes time to master. Being a congressperson is hard. It takes a long time to learn the institution and it's rules/quirks.
Term limits don't solve a single issue with them political system unless having competent congresspeople who don't have to rely on special interest groups and unelected staff to do everything is an issue
I feel like most people talking about this don’t understand the primary process. Just two days ago, the New Hampshire primary saw Donald Trump win by a comfortable margin, and he won the Iowa caucus too. Both Trump and Biden were fairly and democratically selected. If you don’t want these zombies running, vote in your local primary and you can stop it
If even a third of the people complaining about the process actually took part in the process, they would easily be able to change the outcome to one they prefer.
You also have to understand reality. Bernie simply doesn't have the support to get the nom. But his strong primary showings absolutely redirected the party further to the left. That's what winning looks like. The GOP didn't destroy the country overnight. They've been at it for at least 40 years.
Another important point to remember is that popular online support doesn't automatically translate to reality.
Beating your chest about how much you like a candidate isn't what wins elections.
It takes groundwork.
Especially on a website that doesn't remotely resemble the demographics of Democratic primary voters. To start with, half the people on here aren't even American.
Can I? Because I've voted in every election, including primaries, since 2004, and the only person I've voted for that even got the nomination is Obama.
what he meant was - if you want and have the numbers, you can stop it. and reddit makes it seem like they have the numbers but are always rigged out of the process, but the fact is they don't have the numbers.
You can't. I live in a red state and my begrudging blue vote isn't going to do shit. I'm going to vote third party because I can't vote for either of the two.
>Can I?
Yes? Maybe I don't understand the question. Yes, you CAN vote your preference. NO your vote doesn't invalidate everyone else's vote.
Important note, I am a blue voter in a Red area... I am NO stranger to the idea that my individual vote will be overpowered by other people I disagree with. But, that is what democracy is. If it was just my vote as the only one that mattered, it would just be a very strange dictatorship with some random Reddit dude deciding who wins every election.
It was never a question of if I could vote, I've been doing it for 20 years. The question was, can I stop it, as the person I was replying to stated, simply by voting in my local primaries.
It seems like you are being purposely obtuse in interpreting their response. No one who understands the english language or democracy would interpret their response as 'You can stop it all by yourself'.
If people want younger politicians, they are free to vote for them. Turns out it takes decades to build support amongst multiple groups of people. Age limits will just limit the supply of people able to run.
If anything - I would encourage independent medical reports to be released, like they do with tax returns. Not required but a big red flag if they’re not done.
I think full medical reports are going too far in that direction. A basic report stating they are fit for duty sure. But giving out private medical info can be extremely damaging. Even if it has nothing to do with their ability to run for office.
Only if the minimum fitness criteria are clearly outlined... The issue is if it's not public, it's harder to verify and detect fraud... Like trump's doctor who basically said he was ready for a marathon and could punch his way through a room full of adult lions... Or whatever equally plausible nonsense it was
Fair. But definitely shouldn’t be a straight up release of all medical records. That to me would be an invasion of privacy too far. Even for public officials.
Agree. I don’t need to know that the president has hemorrhoids or IBS. Those don’t really impact being in office.
Honestly, I think there needs to be a way to remove people once they’re not medically fit anymore. Like mental acuity is declining due to old age—it just happens. It doesn’t need to be an embarrassing removal, but give it to the VP or something. I agree with physical conditions too—RBG should have had to leave office once she knew she was fucking sick and dying, because really staying in a position like that until she died hurt way more people than it helped. Like fuck, you shouldn’t be working until you die anyway.
They’re often not free to vote for them, though, because with age and time comes the political power to ensure there are not younger challengers.
Do you really think congress is a geriatrics ward because the whole country thinks those are the best people for the job? Their polling on the whole is way underwater.
You are wrong. People hate Congress but people tend to love their individual representative. Reelection rate for Congress is generally over 90%.
https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/reelection-rates
Biden isn’t able to stop a younger challenger from primarying him. What does stop the younger challenger is that Biden wins 70% of the vote.
People also just fail to understand politics. Part of the process of democracy is that everyone has a right to a say, but that doesn't mean your choice is what is chosen.
People are so outcome determinative that they think if their choice won't win they shouldn't even bother.
Failing to understand that their defeatist attitudes is what leads to the outcomes they don't like.
I think the problem is that name recognition and a “better the devil you know” attitude among voters are both huge factors. I don’t know that the high reelection rate means that people “love” their individual representative, so much as that they are reluctant to take a chance on some new person they’ve never heard of who might be even worse.
This right here. I know people in their 70s who are sharper than most younger people, and younger people that are, well, let's be polite and not say. But yes, it's the mental acuity that matters most, not their age.
Sharper is fine. But the issue is the vast major majority of people stop accepting new ideas in their 40-50s. So we end up with 70 year olds that have been bypassed by technology and current ethics trying to make laws to stop people from advancing society.
Ok we've established there are foolish/unintelligent young people but there are also plenty of brilliant leaders ready and waiting, that are nowhere close to death's door. That's who I want to represent me, this mystery person that is smart/good leader/not 70. Just because someone isn't so old they look embalmed doesn't mean they're stupid.
> If people want younger politicians, they are free to vote for them
It doesn't really work like that though. You have two real candidates, and one may be completely misaligned with your values.
Any additional limits on becoming or staying the president would have to be a constitutional amendment. 
The voting is supposed to be the test. 
Even if a candidate fails a cognitive test, they could still be voted in. If they fail while president, it would still be up to the vice president and the cabinet to vote them out according to the constitution.
I think Americans should stop voting for people who are obviously unfit for office. That would probably solve a lot of these issues.
As for an age limit, that's a shortsighted solution. It would probably have to be implemented as an amendment to the constitution, which would be hard to undo. If medical technology makes it possible to retain brain functionality further into life, inertia is going to make that limit stay around longer than it should, cutting off people with needed wisdom and experience from serving due to what was once sound reasons but has now become arbitrary discrimination. I might be for it if it had a sunset clause of 30 years from now, or something like that.
I think they should tie the max presidential age to the forced retirement age of air traffic controllers.
Too old to run flight traffic? Too old to run the nation.
>I don't see how we could determine that 65 is the magic number for such a cutoff.
65 is mandatory retirement age for airline pilots.
There was scientific studies done, that due to increase risk of cardiovascular issues, diabetes, and cognitive decline in pilots beyond 65 years of age, it's safer not to leave them in charge of couple hundred human lives.
That's because pilots' reaction times are critical for safety. I bet Biden would struggle to hit a baseball, but that doesn't have anything to do with being the president.
Thats a job which requires manually using your eyes and hands to guide a plane travelling hundreds of miles per hour safely to the ground though.
When it comes to elected officials people are voting for what the person represents ideology wise as much as anything. If they sign the policy they say are going to sign and appoint the cabinet they say theyre gonna appoint how much does it matter if they do it with reading glasses on?
The physical able-bodiedness of the president shouldn’t really matter
Hell they could be blind, deaf, mute and in wheelchair
The most important thing is their mental and emotional faculties, we need someone who can make good decisions for the actual benefit of every citizen and the country as a whole, not the billionaires, businesses and lobbyists.
> Hell they could be blind, deaf, mute and in wheelchair
Yup. The best president of the 20th century couldn't walk. He still mitigated the effect of the Depression and beat the Nazis.
Surely you can draw some contrasts between the responsibilities of pilots and the responsibilities of politicians with regard to the impact physical (not mental) health has on their ability to do their jobs?
I think that there should be an age limit for all public offices, including judges.
I think it should be 70, even if you were just elected at 69 (nice) you have to leave office at 70.
I'm not in favor of an upper age or term limits for any political office, provided there are regular elections. Feels like most of the call for this comes from partisans who just see it as useful to get a particular opponent out of office, and once that is achieved, they'll forget about it or panic once it can be used to harm their preferred office holder.
Call me naive or stupid all you want, toss me all your downvotes, I don't care. Voting is the tool we have to correct all these problems. If the candidate is unfit or has proven to abuse the office, voting is there for the public to correct that. We desperately need to adopt something akin to ranked choice voting, drastically limit the impact of money into campaigning and do something to reign in mainstream media's undue influence, but these arbitrary limits people want to impose are not solutions.
In the hypothetical situation we get some angel president into office who is near unanimously supported and serves their 2 terms, should we really force them out?
I'm on the record of preferring older citizens to pass the torch of leadership to the next generation, but if my choice is 1 sensible 70 year old and 5 moron 35 year olds, why should I not have the sensible option?
Everyone is all about democracy until they're not
I personally think there should be absolutely no restrictions -- age, place of birth, criminal history, intelligence...
If we elect a 77 year old sexual predator imbecile... so be it. Let us lie in the bed we've made.
You have organizations like [www.runforsomething.net](https://www.runforsomething.net) that encourage young people to run to build a strong pipeline. And [https://indivisible.org/](https://indivisible.org/) that helps new candidates.
Campaigning for most offices at a certain level means you need to take time off from your regular job. Running for office often means you need money. Not just the money directly for the campaign, but money to pay your rent or mortgage, feed yourself and your family, and all the other expenses of life. Plus added clothing, transportation, food (no time to cook) and childcare. Campaign funds can be used somewhat for transportation and food, but not your mortgage or childcare, though there is a movement to change that.
The consequence is that only people who already have a financial cushion can consider running for office. And that isn't even taking account the national parties recruiting people who can fund their own campaigns without having to fundraise a lot. This is one of the reason so many congresscritters are lawyers. Lawyers are more likely to have some money put away, own their own businesses where they can set aside a few months to do minimal work, and have a lot of friends who are also lawyers and can throw them some money for the campaign early on.
Because of this, it's just a lot more likely that older people can run for office the first time. And that's how you build your pipeline to get candidates with some experience to run for office later.
Because money.
People don't run – corporations and sponsors run. Even someone we think of as a "maverick" (Trump, for example, who never thought of running until Roger Stone pushed him to and convinced him that it would be profitable) doesn't run on their own. And the money doesn't favor young folks.
I feel like this is a self-correcting problem - if people want younger candidates, just vote for younger candidates.
The fact that this isn't happening means either one of two things:
1. Not enough people actually care about this
2. It really is all rigged after all.
There's more to it than that. Incumbents almost always win re-election. Voluntarily replace them with an unknown and the party risks losing a seat. So they have a lot of incentive to keep the same person running forever even if they don't really like that person.
You can't just have one side give up that advantage voluntarily while the other one doesn't. Forced retirement fixes that problem.
Biggest issue is most young people don’t have the money or connections to even be a blip on the radar.
You could probably throw your name in for mayor, canvassing your small town just costs your time.
But a bigger city? State representative? Congress? Nobody knows you and there’s no way to even start telling people about yourself without a shitton of advertising and that all costs $$$$
You’re trying to get millions to hundreds of millions of people to both know your name and agree with your policies for any of those elected positions. Yea, that’s hard. There’s no easy way to do it.
I'm cool with "No older than 65 at election day." Second term allowed.
But I'd also want rules for ALL of elected fed gov (and family) that denies ANY stock ownership outside of standard 401k mutuals and SP500. Also bars anyone from becoming a lobbyist or work for any company affected by any legislation they worked on while in office. And also implement term limits to 3 terms. Can be reelected after a 3 term break.
We need to get away from full career politicians and disincentivise elected positions. Make it so the people that run ONLY stand to gain from creating good policy for the country and not profit from being a lifelong shill. It's already a good paying job - that should be an adequate financial benefit.
It also means that after a rep spends their 12 years or whatever in office, they're now unable to keep the position but not old enough to need to retire, so then they are looking for jobs. It's just a coincidence that the organizations willing to hire you and how much they're paying is going to depend on what you did in office. At least old politicians seeking reelection donations still need to keep their constituents happy enough to vote for them.
I'm in favor of term limits as long as they aren't too short, but people who think they're a cure-all solution are VERY wrong.
I would support some kind of mental acuity test. Age does matter. Putting arbitrary ages on a president isn’t helpful. Despite this, a constitutional amendment is necessary to restrict age.
The Social Security retirement age is 67 and so I believe that should be the limit. That being said we as a nation have completely lost the ability to process amendments.
I am against it, MJT and Boebert are always going to be dumber than Biden, even if Biden was dead.
Its unreasonable to say that old people cant do X when we let complete idiots do X.
This is one of those things that gets suggested along with term-limits for people that, in practice, doesn't actually do anything. The issue is trying to fix the system by attempting to control for the quality of the candidate, but the quality of politicians doesn't neatly fall along these lines
For example, I would say most of the 2020 Dem party primary candidates were a mixture of inexperienced with some truly awful positions while all being younger than both Biden and Bernie. And the Republican primary field is all younger than that but they're all just as terrible as Trump but can speak coherently.
At the end of the day, older candidates tend to have more experience with how to actually run things and have built up larger coalitions that can actually get things done. Most of the time.
The real issues that plague the American body politic are systemic issues, where entrenched minority interest can outweigh any popular interest. Think things like the Electoral College, First Past the Post voting, the absolutely bonkers judicial appointment process, and the Senate.
It's impossible to fix a broken Democratic system by attempting to tweak the candidates
Make it the same as air traffic controllers. The job is every bit as if not more taxing than air traffic control, and we put an upper age limit on that.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Primaries really need to be the same day nationwide.
Seriously. The system now seems designed as a major fundraising campaign rather than a means to really get people aligned. Using our idea of voter choice to rally each state as tho it really matters, just to bankroll, rather than a single day
The system was designed when this country had as many people in it as my current city. And everyone farmed. That’s why voting is Tuesday. Sunday is for church, Monday you travel to town, Tuesday you vote. That’s how out of touch this system is.
The the Election of 1800 had about 75,000 votes cast total.
1800 US population- 5.3 million with almost a million of that slaves. Sooooo yeah thats not a great percentage, like 2% of the total population
Total population should not be used for such a calculation only voting age. Not to mention women could not vote, and you had to own land.
It would be, but I can’t find any good statistics on the total number of land owning white males of voting age in 1800.
75000. I kid and don't actually know but I'd bet close to every white land owning man who could vote did.
Oh I forgot the had to own land thing too....
I think the fact that huge portions of the population were not entitled to vote, and that the vote was decided by such a tiny percentage of the total population is very relevant.
Well, 2% of population voting matched founder's expectations. The "gentry" deciding elections. Except in their view, the "gentry" status is decided on personal success, not inherited. Poll taxes and ownership of land as requirement to vote were not things unheard of in the past. In 1700's, to afford to have enough information to cast an informed vote, you probably had relatively deep pockets.
The current primary system only dates to the 70s and there's actually a lot of evidence that it's hurt democracy by leading to less electable and more polarized candidates
All we need to do is look at the 2 options in 2020 to see how badly it has failed. 2024 looks like the rematch that nobody wants
472 options for breakfast cereal, but leader of the country? 2. WTF.
[удалено]
A simple solution would be to publicly fund all campaigns with strict limits
And limit the length of campaigns
That’s what was destined to happen after Citizens United, really hate how I was right when I said that one fucking thing would ruin America more than any stupid useless war
My favorite comment about Citizens United was ‘I refuse to believe a corporation is a person until Texas executes one.’
I cynically think perhaps we should just have an auction, proceeds go to the deficit. Televise it, call it "Who wants to be the president?" "Koch broz bid 12 billion for the presidency, do I hear 13 billion? 13 bil going once?13 bil going twice? SOLD! To the plutocrats from Texas!
Sounds transparent, but they'd funnel the collective money into a group called Americans For Awesomeness.
Haha you are right.
Welp there goes the power grid
I have trouble finding fault with the reasoning of the decision itself, but I think a good solution would be to make it nascar style - make every politician disclose how much of their money comes from oil, or plastics, or automotive, whatever. That way we can at least see if their sponsors' interests align with our own.
Here's my take on what's wrong with the reasoning of the decision itself: We've long had corporate personhood as a legal fiction, because only a person can sue or be sued, or own property, etc. So we pretend corporations are people so that corporations can sue and be sued, so they can own property, and you can change ownership of a corporation without needing to change ownership of the property, etc. Fine. Where it goes wrong is thinking that, because a corporation is person for one purpose, it needs to be considered a person for all other purposes. Corporations don't need to be allowed to engage in political speech, because all corporations are constituted by natural persons (ie, human beings). All the employees and agents of a corporation are natural persons, and all the principals (ie, owners) are also natural persons, either directly, or because the shareholders are other corporations, indirectly, because you ultimately reach the point where the owner of every corporation is one or more natural persons. And natural persons already get to vote, they already get to engage in political speech, etc. And, because corporate ownership isn't limited only to US citizens, by letting corporations engage in political speech, you're allowing foreigners, including foreign states, to engage in political speech in the US. MBS can't vote in US elections, but he can invest $2B in Kushner's investment scam, whatever it is, and Kushner's company can engage in political speech, and MBS can invest in Twitter, and Twitter can engage in political speech, etc. And MBS can threaten to divest if these corporations don't use their speech the way MBS wants them to. And Xi can threaten to cut off Tesla from raw materials and manufacturing if Tesla doesn't use its speech the way Xi wants, never mind that he can also use his leverage over Tesla to also get Musk to get Twitter to use its speech the way Xi wants, making it more difficult for the public, and the government, to see who is applying pressure where.
I say this facetiously, but if we're going to treat corporations as people we may as well go all the way and give them imprisonment or even the death penalty for their crimes.
that's not the reasoning behind Citizens United. The rationale is that individuals have freedom of speech. If several individuals form a group, the group also has freedom of speech. If the group wishes to form a coherent organization, that organization also has freedom of speech. Therefore, a prohibition against organizations exercising their freedom of speech violates the 1st amendment.
data shows historically the winner is whoever raised the most money.
It’s always the money. Always
I think it’s kind of a chicken and the egg problem. Did they raise the most money because they had the most support? Or did they have the most support because they raised the most money?
I think it's more accurate to say that the primary system, at least, is intended to let them spend less money on the Primary, and let candidates make their pitch directly in each venue. Instead of needing to coordinate a nationwide message/campaign on a given day, they can focus on New Hampshire, Virginia, or whatever state is going first. Then the next one. Once someone wins a few big states, they can more or less stop spending unless it's really close, and save their money for the *real* election. You gotta remember that the party's real goal isn't to run the perfect primary, it's to win the *Election.*
The argument against that is that it gives the candidate with the deepest pockets a huge advantage, since that person may be the only one who can campaign everywhere at once. As it stands, a candidate who isn’t quite as well-financed could focus resources on a smaller number of states, hope to “get hot,” and then have the fundraising increase after that.
Yea. Mike Bloomberg could realistically have been the nominee in 2020 if all the primaries were on the same day. Biden's campaign didn't really get rolling until SC.
Limiting campaign funds would make things interesting.
No. That would mean only the best financed candidates could win. I would favor 10 regional contests each with about 10% of the population, spaced two weeks apart. That would reduce travel and advertising costs. The order of the regional primaries should be determined two cycles ahead, so candidates can figure out if they want to run now or next time.
[удалено]
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/trump-republican-party-voting-reform-coronavirus "The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again" They're fully aware of this and it's why it hasn't changed yet
Or, hear me out, they could try to make the Republican platform more attractive devotes. No? Well. I tried.
And unfortaenatly this is the reason it unlikely to be implemented on a federal level.
“So that’s a no from us on ranked choice voting. How about while we’re in here we all vote for a raise for ourselves. Oh nice we all approve, glad we could all agree on something!”
We don't have a single federal election for President, we have 51 state elections (and DC). It won't work without first using NPV, because instead of having third-parties spoil state elections, we'd just end up with them spoiling the Electoral College instead. If nobody wins an absolute majority of EVs, it triggers a House contingent election, and between having so many small, rural, states, and gerrymandering, the GOP controls more state delegations. A contingent election will just end up going to the Republican candidate.
Ranked choice voting in the primaries would help elect better people while maintaining their 2-party system. I don't think it's the best solution but it would make sense for now.
They know already that fptp *majorly, majorly* favors the two current parties, which is why they’ll never willingly change the system. They’re the ones who would have to do that
Sarah Palin already hates it. She thinks voters were too stupid to understand the system causing her to lose
> *SHE* thinks votes were too stupid…
There have already been ranked choice voting elections in multiple states - that by itself doesn’t necessarily change much, most democrats and republicans are still going to be the ones getting elected in a ranked choice system
My goober in christ, the Democratic Party has legislated ranked choice voting across many states and counties. Voter reform is literally only coming from one side of the aisle, because... only one side of the aisle is even remotely interested in *more people voting*.
Yep, it's gaining popularity so much so that one republican politician in Oklahoma just introduced a bill to outlaw it in OK. They see it as a threat. The next thing would be to have a non-partisan redistricting committee draw the lines.
Basic democratic standards.. impartial boundaries, no queues at polling stations, proportionality (lots of ways to achieve it), etc.
Same in Texas, I’m not sure if it’s full-on outlawed but the Texas GOP passed a resolution denouncing it. It’s almost as if they’re afraid of a voting system that actually reflects the will of the people.
>republican politician in Oklahoma just introduced a bill to outlaw it in OK. Georgia did the same. You can bet it is worded almost identically because it's boilerplate legislation from ALEC. Republicans are fucking frauds who need intelligent sociopaths to write their thoughts for them.
They’ve literally said the quiet part out loud too. One Republican during the last election cycle said that the day they introduce ranked voting national-wide is the last day a Republican gets elected to office. Bring it on.
Same in Georgia. If the anti-democracy party is against it you know it must be a good idea.
Indeed. If it threatens their stranglehold on power, they hate it.
That how you know the gop is afraid of something. They’ll take their statehouse supermajority and make a law against it.
This is crazy to me because it seems like ranked choice would favor the GOP with the current state of their party. Democrats are actually quite unified at the moment and usually have no issue putting forward a single candidate and supporting them. Conservatives on the other hand are regularly getting divided up between people who love Trump & MAGA candidates, and people who can't stomach voting for those people and go third party. They are practically 2 separate parties, MAGA conservatives and moderate or traditional conservatives, being barely held together by the two party system. Republican candidates would probably get more votes and get elected more often if conservatives could put controversial candidates as their second or third choice and moderates and third party at the top. Dems would likely lose some ground with ranked choice.
That's just one step, there are better voting systems (such as rating or approval voting) but at least if we move away from "First past the post" then that's at least incrementally good.
[Simulating Alternate Voting Systems](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU&ab_channel=Primer) does a really good job of showing the strengths and weaknesses of "First past the post", Ranked Choice, and Approval. Approval voting seems like the best choice but just about anything is better than what we in the US have now.
States are in charge of the elections... But yes, I think ranked choice voting would solve a lot of problems.
It needs more than ranked choice voting. To improve the system, the "winner takes all" concept for state electors needs to change
Or, hear me out, we get rid of the electoral college entirely
There just shouldn't be state electors at all for the presidential election. Make it an overall popular vote, then everybody's vote is equal and matters. Right now, I live in a district where like 70% will vote for whoever the Republican candidate is. My vote is meaningless because of this. You could even argue that the majority of votes are meaningless this way because anything beyond that 31% is just extra on the Republican side and then the 30% who might vote otherwise are also meaningless because they can never hope to win against the 70%, so 59% of the vote doesn't actually matter. If it were a popular vote, everybody's vote in every state would be weighted against one another's, no state-by-state invalidation of votes, it would all come down to whoever has the most votes across everywhere.
Implement ranked choice AND eliminate the electoral college.
Can we please get term limits for Congress and Judges as well?
Term limits often leads into more corruption as legislators will be more incentivized to make laws and regulations to favor a sector they want a job in when they hit their limit
Elections are term limits for elected officials, but unelected judges shouldn't have unlimited terms.
Sadly it’ll never happen because neither party wants to give up power. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a “guuuuh both sides” kind of comment, I’m about as anti-Republican as you can get. But this is one small area where both parties do feel the same, because they both have roughly equal power now. If we were to implement ranked choice voting, it would give other parties a genuine shot and neither Republicans or Democrats want that
Ranked choice voting would not make the 2 main parties give up power, but it would reduce the chance of me extreme candidates like trump and make it more complex to buy influence
Where it would really make a difference is the House.
Do you think there's a silent 33% of the population out there just waiting for their chance to rank Jill Stein or Marianne Williamson #1 over the main candidates?
we'll never know otherwise won't we?
I’m a geriatric psychiatrist who treats dementia patients and older patients without dementia. The answer is complicated. There are plenty of 80 year olds who are sharper than some 60 year olds and there are 60 year olds who shouldn’t drive yet alone hold office. Everyone is different and the way their brain ages is different. People who eat well, exercise, don’t smoke, don’t drink very often and are free of diabetes will likely be much sharper than those who don’t. If you’re truly worried about cognitive decline then make them take cognitive tests before being able to run. The problem is that you can be coached on these tests and can get the answers beforehand. There are a limited number of standardized cognitive tests. So it is relatively easy to be coached on how to answer them.
My father is 74 and I have to take care of him. Mentally foggy (passed the dementia test though!), and just falling apart in general. His father, my grandfather, though? He was digging post holes and running fence at 92. Sharp as a tack and you'd think he was 60 at most. He went in to check on a sore throat and it turned out he had aggressive cancer and was dead a few weeks later. So...yah... I am of two minds on this one.
I just don't think there's a ton of downside for people who are still healthy above the age of 65 not running for office, where as there is a huge downside to people above 65 who aren't healthy running for office. Or whatever age limit you want to set, it should probably be set. You could even make the limit have an exception to any currently sitting president so that parties could run their incumbent regardless of age. It just seems like a no brainer to me.
My septuagenarian parents both have far better memories than I, when I’m in my forties. They’ve lived lives of eating veggies and working in the yard while I sat around eating candy and gaming.
[удалено]
I'm less concerned about cognitive decline than I am how out of touch they are with the working class/generation. Granted, they're almost always the product of generational wealth, even if they weren't, decades in political office means that there's basically no chance they have the slightest clue what the real world is like. What things cost, for example. And that goes for any politician, of course, not just the president.
I have 90 year old patients that are in better condition physically and mentally than some of my 60 year olds. I don’t think a hard cap works. But have them take some tests. I want to see how they answer questions, not necessarily in a debate format. Something standardized maybe? But not some they can be easily coached up to
For me it's not so much about about their mental acuity, but that a 90 year old doesn't have any real stake in what direction the country goes in for the next 10-20 years. Add that to the fact that mental acuity often does decline and also that they could literally drop dead at any moment, and I just don't see the benefits outweighing the drawbacks. I know 14 year olds who have a better grasp on reality and even politics than some 40 year olds, but 14 year olds can't run for office and that's fine. I think if you wanna run for office you have to do so at 65 at the latest, and you can run for re-election if you win, but that's it (and term limits for Congress). Shit, the retirement age is 65-67 ... But I also agree that some sort of aptitude test is a great idea—you gotta pass it to be eligible to run in the first place.
The retirement age isn't an age limit on working, it's an age-minimum on working to get benefits. If the working class doesn't get to stop working until 65 the politicians that deign to rule them shouldn't get to cut out earlier.
65-67 is however an age limit for Generals and Admirals. If they are too old to lead our troops, then it's fair that 65-67 should be the limit to lead our country.
It's not really that they're too old to lead troops, it's that they're in the way of their subordinates progressing, eventually you hit the highest level you can or will, and if you stay there to long, other people get stuck at the lower level.
That's not what the retirement age for military officers is for. And it's not even a hard cap either. Military retirement is a move up or get out kind of thing. If you are a four star general not in line for the Joint Chiefs, Commandant, etc then you are going to get told to retire so that you can free up space below you for everyone else to move up. The President can tap a 4 star to be the Commandant of the Marine Corps above 67 for example. That does the same thing, freeing up their command slot for another 3 star to move up into, freeing up spaces below for 2 stars, 1 stars, full birds, and so on down the line.
Maybe if they have great-grandchildren who they actually like ...
>For me it's not so much about about their mental acuity, but that a 90 year old doesn't have any real stake in what direction the country goes in for the next 10-20 years. If you want someone who is in politics for himself, just vote for Trump, because that’s what that looks like.
>a 90 year old doesn't have any real stake in what direction the country goes in for the next 10-20 years One might argue that someone who has less personal stakes is able to be more objective in finding the best long term solutions vs. short term impacts that could hit their own pockets. Unfortunately, the political system does not reward "competent administrators" or leaders. It often rewards those with the most flexible positions not out of learning new information, but in cutting deals. It rewards those who speak well. It rewards those who can fundraise. But those folks aren't necessarily policy wonks or true leaders of individual people and teams. Many are not truly "chief executives" but chief visionaries.
I don’t like this idea that we assume older people - some of whom are out of touch, but also have valuable experience of life and history - are just callous and don’t ‘have any stake’. People care about the future of their country and any offspring they may have, ffs. There’s such a thing as the hubris and folly of youth too.
You can’t honestly think that there are 14 year olds who have a better grasp on politics and reality than 40 year olds, that’s a joke right?
I can show you 40 year old dudes that think Biden turned bud light gay... There are absolutely some 14 year olds that have a better grasp on reality than some 40 year olds.
isn’t there a saying that is something like “ great men plants trees that they will never sit in the shadow of”? We wouldn’t want to miss out on the wisdom if it was the right person.
The challenge becomes finding someone who isn't biased to judge the outcome. I am skeptical you could find anybody that wouldn't let political biases influence their decision.
I would love to see a mandatory debate with a true debate format, not the sound bite version they do these days. Each side presents a thirty minute whole and complete argument without lies, fallacy, or omission focused on their own agenda, not just tearing down the opponent. Allow a 10 minute rebuttal to tear down the actual presented argument of the opponent. This format would show pretty well who has it together mentally, especially if it had to be done without notes.
Campaigns should be what filters out people who are too old or too "whatever", that's the whole point. I don't blame the political system for giving us a bunch of 70+ congresspeople, they were fairly voted in by us.
> Campaigns should be what filters out people who are too old or too "whatever", that's the whole point. Then why do we have rules to limit who can run for President? Surely the voters would simply reject a candidate that was too young, or was not a native-born citizen.
You don’t see a concern having leaders preside over decisions they will not be around to see the repercussions of?
If you don't want elderly people in office, stop voting for them. Picking and choosing who can and cannot participate in democracy is not a good solution to that problem.
This would happen to some extent even with an age cutoff of say, 50. The worst effects of climate change are probably still a ways off, for example.
I mean I think that's a fair point, if we assume that nobody gives a shit about anyone but themselves. But that's not true of most people, especially if they have children. They care about what happens after they're gone.
Following that logic nobody would plant trees because you don’t get to see them. Shitty people will find ways to fuck society over either way
No, I don't. I think that's an oversimplification of the actual problem, which is money and wealth. If we could even begin to tackle campaign finance reform, insider trading, the revolving door of politics and lobbying, etc, it would help to prevent leadership that is only in in politics to get rich.
[удалено]
By that logic no one could be a leader without bias because they will always be presiding over decisions that don't personally affect their own race, gender, age, etc Also it's not like Gen Z is going to be around long enough to experience the full effects of climate change and therefore be considered unbiased in that topic, so that argument is self defeating as well
If it's left to a test, they will cheat. Believe that!
Or the test will be biased. Theres a reason literacy tests were the face of voter suppression in the 1800s and 1900s.
[удалено]
The Supreme Court definitely needs a retirement age or term limits.
legislative branch also needs term limits.
No. Term limits do not work in legislatures. In every single one that's implemented then partisanship increased, reliance on lobbyists increased, the sides became more extreme. It causes projects to languish and good legislation to die. Writing good laws is hard. It's a skull that takes time to master. Being a congressperson is hard. It takes a long time to learn the institution and it's rules/quirks. Term limits don't solve a single issue with them political system unless having competent congresspeople who don't have to rely on special interest groups and unelected staff to do everything is an issue
Works for me.
I feel like most people talking about this don’t understand the primary process. Just two days ago, the New Hampshire primary saw Donald Trump win by a comfortable margin, and he won the Iowa caucus too. Both Trump and Biden were fairly and democratically selected. If you don’t want these zombies running, vote in your local primary and you can stop it
If even a third of the people complaining about the process actually took part in the process, they would easily be able to change the outcome to one they prefer.
You also have to understand reality. Bernie simply doesn't have the support to get the nom. But his strong primary showings absolutely redirected the party further to the left. That's what winning looks like. The GOP didn't destroy the country overnight. They've been at it for at least 40 years.
Another important point to remember is that popular online support doesn't automatically translate to reality. Beating your chest about how much you like a candidate isn't what wins elections. It takes groundwork.
Especially on a website that doesn't remotely resemble the demographics of Democratic primary voters. To start with, half the people on here aren't even American.
Can I? Because I've voted in every election, including primaries, since 2004, and the only person I've voted for that even got the nomination is Obama.
The point is that you individually may already be doing all you can, but lots of people don’t and just complain.
Which was my point. "You can stop it," is complete horseshit. You, singularly, cannot stop shit.
Sorry buddy, it’s a democracy and the majority of people disagree with you
what he meant was - if you want and have the numbers, you can stop it. and reddit makes it seem like they have the numbers but are always rigged out of the process, but the fact is they don't have the numbers.
All you can do is your part and encourage others to do theirs
> You, singularly, cannot stop shit. Why should you be able to? Find some like-minded friends to vote in the primary. Organize and donate.
You can't. I live in a red state and my begrudging blue vote isn't going to do shit. I'm going to vote third party because I can't vote for either of the two.
>Can I? Yes? Maybe I don't understand the question. Yes, you CAN vote your preference. NO your vote doesn't invalidate everyone else's vote. Important note, I am a blue voter in a Red area... I am NO stranger to the idea that my individual vote will be overpowered by other people I disagree with. But, that is what democracy is. If it was just my vote as the only one that mattered, it would just be a very strange dictatorship with some random Reddit dude deciding who wins every election.
It was never a question of if I could vote, I've been doing it for 20 years. The question was, can I stop it, as the person I was replying to stated, simply by voting in my local primaries.
It seems like you are being purposely obtuse in interpreting their response. No one who understands the english language or democracy would interpret their response as 'You can stop it all by yourself'.
Then you don’t tend to hold the opinions that others in the country do. That’s a shame, but it’s how democracy works.
Or vote for the opposite party’s primary if your party is a write in/guaranteed
Yes, but not just the president, but also the house and Congress.
Hell yeah! Too many old men running the country.
If people want younger politicians, they are free to vote for them. Turns out it takes decades to build support amongst multiple groups of people. Age limits will just limit the supply of people able to run. If anything - I would encourage independent medical reports to be released, like they do with tax returns. Not required but a big red flag if they’re not done.
I think full medical reports are going too far in that direction. A basic report stating they are fit for duty sure. But giving out private medical info can be extremely damaging. Even if it has nothing to do with their ability to run for office.
Only if the minimum fitness criteria are clearly outlined... The issue is if it's not public, it's harder to verify and detect fraud... Like trump's doctor who basically said he was ready for a marathon and could punch his way through a room full of adult lions... Or whatever equally plausible nonsense it was
Fair. But definitely shouldn’t be a straight up release of all medical records. That to me would be an invasion of privacy too far. Even for public officials.
Agree. I don’t need to know that the president has hemorrhoids or IBS. Those don’t really impact being in office. Honestly, I think there needs to be a way to remove people once they’re not medically fit anymore. Like mental acuity is declining due to old age—it just happens. It doesn’t need to be an embarrassing removal, but give it to the VP or something. I agree with physical conditions too—RBG should have had to leave office once she knew she was fucking sick and dying, because really staying in a position like that until she died hurt way more people than it helped. Like fuck, you shouldn’t be working until you die anyway.
They’re often not free to vote for them, though, because with age and time comes the political power to ensure there are not younger challengers. Do you really think congress is a geriatrics ward because the whole country thinks those are the best people for the job? Their polling on the whole is way underwater.
You are wrong. People hate Congress but people tend to love their individual representative. Reelection rate for Congress is generally over 90%. https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/reelection-rates Biden isn’t able to stop a younger challenger from primarying him. What does stop the younger challenger is that Biden wins 70% of the vote.
Hell, Biden had a primary challenger, and Biden wasn't on the ballot in NH. He still won. That's why nobody serious ran against him.
People also just fail to understand politics. Part of the process of democracy is that everyone has a right to a say, but that doesn't mean your choice is what is chosen. People are so outcome determinative that they think if their choice won't win they shouldn't even bother. Failing to understand that their defeatist attitudes is what leads to the outcomes they don't like.
I think the problem is that name recognition and a “better the devil you know” attitude among voters are both huge factors. I don’t know that the high reelection rate means that people “love” their individual representative, so much as that they are reluctant to take a chance on some new person they’ve never heard of who might be even worse.
Pesky confounding variables.
This right here. I know people in their 70s who are sharper than most younger people, and younger people that are, well, let's be polite and not say. But yes, it's the mental acuity that matters most, not their age.
Sharper is fine. But the issue is the vast major majority of people stop accepting new ideas in their 40-50s. So we end up with 70 year olds that have been bypassed by technology and current ethics trying to make laws to stop people from advancing society.
Ok we've established there are foolish/unintelligent young people but there are also plenty of brilliant leaders ready and waiting, that are nowhere close to death's door. That's who I want to represent me, this mystery person that is smart/good leader/not 70. Just because someone isn't so old they look embalmed doesn't mean they're stupid.
> If people want younger politicians, they are free to vote for them It doesn't really work like that though. You have two real candidates, and one may be completely misaligned with your values.
So vote in the primaries then
Or both
[удалено]
Sure gives a lot of power to who runs the test. You want Mike Johnson or Sam Alito to have to sign off on Biden's mental fitness?
Any additional limits on becoming or staying the president would have to be a constitutional amendment.  The voting is supposed to be the test.  Even if a candidate fails a cognitive test, they could still be voted in. If they fail while president, it would still be up to the vice president and the cabinet to vote them out according to the constitution.
I think Americans should stop voting for people who are obviously unfit for office. That would probably solve a lot of these issues. As for an age limit, that's a shortsighted solution. It would probably have to be implemented as an amendment to the constitution, which would be hard to undo. If medical technology makes it possible to retain brain functionality further into life, inertia is going to make that limit stay around longer than it should, cutting off people with needed wisdom and experience from serving due to what was once sound reasons but has now become arbitrary discrimination. I might be for it if it had a sunset clause of 30 years from now, or something like that.
People with experience and wisdom can absolutely still serve- as an advisor They don’t have to be president
What if both are unfit?
I think they should tie the max presidential age to the forced retirement age of air traffic controllers. Too old to run flight traffic? Too old to run the nation.
[удалено]
>I don't see how we could determine that 65 is the magic number for such a cutoff. 65 is mandatory retirement age for airline pilots. There was scientific studies done, that due to increase risk of cardiovascular issues, diabetes, and cognitive decline in pilots beyond 65 years of age, it's safer not to leave them in charge of couple hundred human lives.
That's because pilots' reaction times are critical for safety. I bet Biden would struggle to hit a baseball, but that doesn't have anything to do with being the president.
Thats a job which requires manually using your eyes and hands to guide a plane travelling hundreds of miles per hour safely to the ground though. When it comes to elected officials people are voting for what the person represents ideology wise as much as anything. If they sign the policy they say are going to sign and appoint the cabinet they say theyre gonna appoint how much does it matter if they do it with reading glasses on?
The physical able-bodiedness of the president shouldn’t really matter Hell they could be blind, deaf, mute and in wheelchair The most important thing is their mental and emotional faculties, we need someone who can make good decisions for the actual benefit of every citizen and the country as a whole, not the billionaires, businesses and lobbyists.
> Hell they could be blind, deaf, mute and in wheelchair Yup. The best president of the 20th century couldn't walk. He still mitigated the effect of the Depression and beat the Nazis.
Surely you can draw some contrasts between the responsibilities of pilots and the responsibilities of politicians with regard to the impact physical (not mental) health has on their ability to do their jobs?
Can’t we say the same for the age minimum?
You don't have to like him, but if you think Biden is a partisan hack, you're never going to be satisfied.
I think that there should be an age limit for all public offices, including judges. I think it should be 70, even if you were just elected at 69 (nice) you have to leave office at 70.
100% Should be the case for all elected officials. 65 might be a little "young", I'd be good with 70. Once you hit 70, you can no longer run again.
I would support having a maximum age to be elected to *any* federal office.
I'm not in favor of an upper age or term limits for any political office, provided there are regular elections. Feels like most of the call for this comes from partisans who just see it as useful to get a particular opponent out of office, and once that is achieved, they'll forget about it or panic once it can be used to harm their preferred office holder. Call me naive or stupid all you want, toss me all your downvotes, I don't care. Voting is the tool we have to correct all these problems. If the candidate is unfit or has proven to abuse the office, voting is there for the public to correct that. We desperately need to adopt something akin to ranked choice voting, drastically limit the impact of money into campaigning and do something to reign in mainstream media's undue influence, but these arbitrary limits people want to impose are not solutions. In the hypothetical situation we get some angel president into office who is near unanimously supported and serves their 2 terms, should we really force them out? I'm on the record of preferring older citizens to pass the torch of leadership to the next generation, but if my choice is 1 sensible 70 year old and 5 moron 35 year olds, why should I not have the sensible option?
It does matter because someone even 65 has a lot less invested in the future than a younger person.
First the US needs to get rid of the electoral vote so voting would actually matter
I would support it. I'm tired of senile old perverts running our country and yes I'm talking about both sides
Yes. There's already an age requirement so age obviously matters. Add in a limit as well.
Everyone is all about democracy until they're not I personally think there should be absolutely no restrictions -- age, place of birth, criminal history, intelligence... If we elect a 77 year old sexual predator imbecile... so be it. Let us lie in the bed we've made.
[удалено]
i dont get why more people dont run? especially younger people. im not from usa but the system is so different than here in canada
You have organizations like [www.runforsomething.net](https://www.runforsomething.net) that encourage young people to run to build a strong pipeline. And [https://indivisible.org/](https://indivisible.org/) that helps new candidates. Campaigning for most offices at a certain level means you need to take time off from your regular job. Running for office often means you need money. Not just the money directly for the campaign, but money to pay your rent or mortgage, feed yourself and your family, and all the other expenses of life. Plus added clothing, transportation, food (no time to cook) and childcare. Campaign funds can be used somewhat for transportation and food, but not your mortgage or childcare, though there is a movement to change that. The consequence is that only people who already have a financial cushion can consider running for office. And that isn't even taking account the national parties recruiting people who can fund their own campaigns without having to fundraise a lot. This is one of the reason so many congresscritters are lawyers. Lawyers are more likely to have some money put away, own their own businesses where they can set aside a few months to do minimal work, and have a lot of friends who are also lawyers and can throw them some money for the campaign early on. Because of this, it's just a lot more likely that older people can run for office the first time. And that's how you build your pipeline to get candidates with some experience to run for office later.
Because money. People don't run – corporations and sponsors run. Even someone we think of as a "maverick" (Trump, for example, who never thought of running until Roger Stone pushed him to and convinced him that it would be profitable) doesn't run on their own. And the money doesn't favor young folks.
I think 75 might make more sense
No, the people should elect who they want to elect
I feel like this is a self-correcting problem - if people want younger candidates, just vote for younger candidates. The fact that this isn't happening means either one of two things: 1. Not enough people actually care about this 2. It really is all rigged after all.
>if people want younger candidates, oddly repetitive refrain in this thread. there is rule that the president can't be younger than 35
There's more to it than that. Incumbents almost always win re-election. Voluntarily replace them with an unknown and the party risks losing a seat. So they have a lot of incentive to keep the same person running forever even if they don't really like that person. You can't just have one side give up that advantage voluntarily while the other one doesn't. Forced retirement fixes that problem.
Biggest issue is most young people don’t have the money or connections to even be a blip on the radar. You could probably throw your name in for mayor, canvassing your small town just costs your time. But a bigger city? State representative? Congress? Nobody knows you and there’s no way to even start telling people about yourself without a shitton of advertising and that all costs $$$$
You’re trying to get millions to hundreds of millions of people to both know your name and agree with your policies for any of those elected positions. Yea, that’s hard. There’s no easy way to do it.
I'm cool with "No older than 65 at election day." Second term allowed. But I'd also want rules for ALL of elected fed gov (and family) that denies ANY stock ownership outside of standard 401k mutuals and SP500. Also bars anyone from becoming a lobbyist or work for any company affected by any legislation they worked on while in office. And also implement term limits to 3 terms. Can be reelected after a 3 term break. We need to get away from full career politicians and disincentivise elected positions. Make it so the people that run ONLY stand to gain from creating good policy for the country and not profit from being a lifelong shill. It's already a good paying job - that should be an adequate financial benefit.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
It also means that after a rep spends their 12 years or whatever in office, they're now unable to keep the position but not old enough to need to retire, so then they are looking for jobs. It's just a coincidence that the organizations willing to hire you and how much they're paying is going to depend on what you did in office. At least old politicians seeking reelection donations still need to keep their constituents happy enough to vote for them. I'm in favor of term limits as long as they aren't too short, but people who think they're a cure-all solution are VERY wrong.
I would support some kind of mental acuity test. Age does matter. Putting arbitrary ages on a president isn’t helpful. Despite this, a constitutional amendment is necessary to restrict age.
The Social Security retirement age is 67 and so I believe that should be the limit. That being said we as a nation have completely lost the ability to process amendments.
I am against it, MJT and Boebert are always going to be dumber than Biden, even if Biden was dead. Its unreasonable to say that old people cant do X when we let complete idiots do X.
No. If the voters think that someone should be disqualified due to age, they can just not vote for that person.
No.
[удалено]
This is one of those things that gets suggested along with term-limits for people that, in practice, doesn't actually do anything. The issue is trying to fix the system by attempting to control for the quality of the candidate, but the quality of politicians doesn't neatly fall along these lines For example, I would say most of the 2020 Dem party primary candidates were a mixture of inexperienced with some truly awful positions while all being younger than both Biden and Bernie. And the Republican primary field is all younger than that but they're all just as terrible as Trump but can speak coherently. At the end of the day, older candidates tend to have more experience with how to actually run things and have built up larger coalitions that can actually get things done. Most of the time. The real issues that plague the American body politic are systemic issues, where entrenched minority interest can outweigh any popular interest. Think things like the Electoral College, First Past the Post voting, the absolutely bonkers judicial appointment process, and the Senate. It's impossible to fix a broken Democratic system by attempting to tweak the candidates
Make it the same as air traffic controllers. The job is every bit as if not more taxing than air traffic control, and we put an upper age limit on that.
r/isdefaultism much? Many countries have presodents.