Over three-fourths of Americans think there should be a maximum age limit for elected officials, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey.
Over three-fourths of Americans think there should be a maximum age limit for elected officials, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey.
I don’t care about term limits. I don’t care about age.
What I DO care about is whether or not they :
A. Are right-wing corporate goon pieces of shit - like Sinema, McConnell, Manchin… in which case, I don’t care how we remove them - just do it.
B. have cognitive function.
They changed the rules for presidential terms only AFTER FDR kept being re-elected. I would have been fine had he stayed alive and president another 15 years.
AOC can be in office as long as she likes. So can Katie Porter. And can Bernie Sanders - at least until his brain starts to show it is melting in the same way that McConnell and Feinstein’s have.
I want something similar to the DMV’s driving or a hospital admittance cognitive function test… just make sure they can do things like tell you their birthday, address, etc.
Otherwise I don’t care.
I think testing for cognitive function is going to prove impossibly difficult - or at least for now. How do we set and quantify an acceptable value for cognitive function? How will we execute testing? When do we test? How often? Who will do the testing? How do we counter for potential performance drugs for test candidates? Do we notify the public on the test findings? There’s just a lot involved with making this the barrier to entry vs age or term limits.
Yeah I was wrestling with this in the same way. It’s too hard. That’s not even mentioning that cognitive function or mental acuity isn’t really a straight or constant line. You could test someone who’s off in outer space most days but you test them on the right day they’d ace any cognitive test you put in front of them.
Oh absolutely. I’m a walking, talking banana if you catch me at the wrong time or on the wrong day.
Also, if we went this route and tested for cognitive function- I’d 100% guarantee that our politicians would be on Adderall or some other amphetamine…if they weren’t already.
It could be a test administered anonymously and run by board certified psychologists, doctors, neurologists, etc.
They could give a grade, and then if they fail within a certain margin, they could be put on a sort of probation, where they’d need to make a passing grade the next test or be ejected from their office.
I just worry this would end up disenfranchising minorities somehow. Tests for voting don’t have the best history
So you advocate your style of politics with lifetime appointments? Certainly nothing authoritarian to see here
They’re saying that politicians like AOC, Katie Porter, Sanders, etc. are high quality public servants, and that high quality public servants should be able to be elected as long as they have cognitive function.
On one hand, in a hypothetical and ideal scenario, that would be nice to have for us voters.
On the other hand, even if an elected official does great work and has a great track record, should they be able to just serve indefinitely until their brain gives out? There’d be a lot of potential problems such as having entrenched and corruptible political operators, even if they started out good, who prevent “fresh blood” from entering politics. It’d be neat to see a study comparing different countries and political systems where there are age barriers and term limits vs those that don’t have them.
High quality public servants in who’s eyes? I’m sure Republicans could argue someone like Rand Paul or Marco Rubio are a high quality public servant.
There would need to be a consistency across the board.
I think that’s their point: That maybe, as long as a candidate is mentally fit, then voters ought to be able to continue voting for them if they feel like the candidate is still worth voting for.
Honestly, if there was some kind of magical bullet to simply ban candidates who are mentally unfit (i.e. losing their marbles) from holding office that couldn’t be exploited, I think a lot of people would find that preferable to an age limit.
That doesn’t address issues like politicians who are too technologically illiterate to do things like open PDF files, though.
Tech illiteracy testing becomes a barrier that harms poor though.
Poor people are more likely to be tech illiterate due to lack of exposure to technology or classes that had access to tech.
Tech test = no people who aren’t rich able to make it into office. I’m not for that.
I do wish there was a requirement for them AFTER they were in office to be given mandatory lessons on really basic fundamentals of tech, and THEN be required to pass to keep their office, but you’d have to be really careful on who gets to make the test, how it’s administered, etc. due to an ability to meddle in that to push for your team.
…But yes - a double-blind “marbles test” administered anonymously on both ends by a 3rd party board-certified medical team would be nice.
Yep.
It’s because, weirdly, the people I advocate for categorically support democratic institutions like 1 person = 1 vote. They don’t think antiquated things like “land-owning business lords are only worthy of voting” and “slavery had enough value that specifically teaching POSITIVE benefits of it should be mandated as part of African-American studies public school curriculum.” The people I support don’t suggest anti-democratic things like “raising the voting age” after getting cucked by them in the mid-terms in the hopes that they can disenfranchise the people whom they fuck over the most so they then wouldn’t be able to vote said pieces of shit out.
The people I support DO think it’s fucked up that someone in Wyoming or even Vermont’s vote means something like 800x the voting power of someone living in places like California, New York, OR yes - even here where I live in goddamn Gunshootistan, Texas.
You can pretend that current-era Republicans don’t LITERALLY advocate for legislative authoritarianism, while the Democrats like FDR mechanically took advantage of perfectly legal and completely vote-driven re-election laws to remain in office, but you’d be a disgusting filthy-ass backwards disingenuous liar more interested in pointing at your precious antiquated rule book while ignoring the material reality a frighteningly high percentage of Americans are faced with currently… I mean… that’s what you WOULD be IF you did that… and also, I wouldn’t give a shit what someone like that thinks.
One party wanted to forgive students who’ve been paying on education loans for 10 years. The other not only said “no” and then BLOCKED the efforts to do so, but at the same time, had already voted to forgive FAR more money given via the “PPP loan” scam that Republicans like Marjorie Taylor-Greene’s (also cucked) husband used to give themselves upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars more than any student has ever taken out - unless they were going to an Ivy League law or medical school.
I’m pretty sure it’s clear which party believes in “authoritarian” shit…
…Unless you’re one of those “anti-masker” idiots who equates mask-wearing with the same level of victim-hood of those who suffered the Holocaust.
Edit : heh - a lack of reply and only a cowardly downvote further show anyone reading which of those is interested in discussion and which is simply interested in silencing the voices of those whose opinions on governance differ fundamentally from their own.
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