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North Dakota voters just approved an age limit for congressional candidates

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Re: North Dakota voters just approved an age limit for congressional candidates

#71

Post by dcow »

colechristensen wrote: post #43
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #3

This is so weird, because you could also just not elect them.

The parties manipulate who runs in the primaries. Voters regularly just don't have the choices. The present ages of all of the candidates who won delegates in the 2020 democratic primaries: 82, 82, 81, 74, 41 I didn't want to vote for Pete Buttigieg. Amy Klobuchar wouldn't have been my choice for a candidate but was the nearest to someone I'd actually want to vote for and she dropped out after the third state. So yea…

Yep. I would vote for a yellow haired keyboard warrior or a bible fearing evangelical regardless of whether I share a single political belief so long as they’re participating in the society I actually exist in. 80 year olds don’t live in the same world.

Re: North Dakota voters just approved an age limit for congressional candidates

#73

Post by dcow »

Ignoring all the actual structural (wealth & power) problems we have that play into our inability to find strong leaders aged appropriately, I sometimes wonder if this isn’t a courage problem. Trump and Biden have nothing to lose. It doesn't take courage and backbone to play those scapegoat roles, because nothing they do to their image or reputation matters. It takes true courage for a 40 year old with half a life ahead of them to stand up and advocate for what they believe in, knowing they’ll e.g. face ridiculous death threats, and may well be ostracized by formerly close friends and/or communities once their hand is known. Most people are not willing to take that risk, and I’m not sure a good leader with a family should be expected to. The reason freedom of expression is sacrosanct is because it enables people to stake their reputation in a way that doesn’t risk being canceled. So they can go back to life as it were if their platform doesn't take off.

In short, if we want to see younger leader perhaps we should stop canceling people left and right over small human blunders or evolving opinions and be more forgiving and tolerant as a society.

Re: North Dakota voters just approved an age limit for congressional candidates

#75

Post by maxerickson »

jwells89 wrote: post #68
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t most people under 30 not vote anyway? I don’t see how this would matter much in practice

There may be an argument that reducing the voting age could result in more politically engaged under-30s (and eventually, over-30s). At 18 most people have too much going on (high school graduation coming up, studying for and applying to college and/or looking into employment, potentially seeking housing if their parents are kicking them out, etc) to have much capacity for political participation. That picture is sig…

The argument doesn't need to be about political engagement, it's about liberty.

Denying the vote to a thoughtful 16 year old is worse than giving the vote to a 29 year old that takes it for granted. And then same thing applies to a 2 year old, if they can independently mark the ballot...

Re: North Dakota voters just approved an age limit for congressional candidates

#76

Post by dcow »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #33
pdonis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue is not electing people... it's re-election advantage. The fix for that isn't age limits, it's term limits. Which would also help with many other issues that are caused by politics being a lucrative career.

If someone is doing a good job why wouldn’t we want to keep them around? If a 30 year old is elected to congress I don’t see why they couldn’t serve for 40 years if they are competent.

The problem comes when that now 70 year old is supposed to foster an urgent and relevant response to problems of the current 30 year old generation. They may be a well respected leader with an impeccable service record, but how can they possibly be effective when they don’t know how to use a smartphone or think cookies refer to the things they in the jar in the kitchen, or think AI is that thing that calls you Dave?

Re: North Dakota voters just approved an age limit for congressional candidates

#77

Post by kibwen »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #40
p1esk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So don’t vote for young candidates then? Why do you need these limits?

It’s not strictly necessary. And Congress has seated people younger than the minimum on several occasions. So in practice it doesn’t have much effect.

> And Congress has seated people younger than the minimum on several occasions.

This would be news to me, one way or the other that's inarguably unconstitutional.

Re: North Dakota voters just approved an age limit for congressional candidates

#78

Post by bobthepanda »

chrisco255 wrote: post #17
bobthepanda wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all, if not nearly all, of the old people that this is aimed at would be career politicians for which many of the same rules apply. the age limit for ND is 81. how many 81 year olds are fresh politicians?

Doesn't matter if it's rare, it's a bad law if it restricts people arbitrarily. Just do term limits.

It’s a mix of issues with both incumbency and health episodes that come with old age.

In practice the legislatures do not sufficiently police the health of their members and remove them if they are in poor health and unfit to serve; and four to six years can be quite a long time for health issues to emerge.

Re: North Dakota voters just approved an age limit for congressional candidates

#79

Post by pdonis »

bodyfour wrote: post #66
pdonis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue is not electing people... it's re-election advantage. The fix for that isn't age limits, it's term limits. Which would also help with many other issues that are caused by politics being a lucrative career.

After seeing how term limits work in the California state legislature, I stopped being a fan of them. The first (small) problem is that it caused unneeded intra-party drama. Effective assembly members would end up forced to seek a "promotion" into the state senate if they wanted to stay in politics. This often meant challenging members of the same party. This ends with people constantly fighting their "allies" to scr…

> it caused unneeded intra-party drama

That seems like a problem with the parties.

> all of the legislators are now short-timers. But do you know who aren't newbs? The lobbyists!

Sounds like a reason to outlaw lobbying.

> I think the very top legislators are ones that become a true expert in their field of interest.

They're not actual experts in the actual field. They're experts in working the system to favor partisans of the field. Not the same thing.

An actual expert in an actual non-political field would be doing productive work in that field. The real root problem is that we expect politicians to be "experts" in anything other than making sure the government does the limited things it's supposed to do, and nothing else--we want to use the government as a tool to solve whatever problems we see, instead of as an umpire whose sole job should be protecting everyone's basic rights and stopping there.

Re: North Dakota voters just approved an age limit for congressional candidates

#80

Post by pdonis »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #33
pdonis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue is not electing people... it's re-election advantage. The fix for that isn't age limits, it's term limits. Which would also help with many other issues that are caused by politics being a lucrative career.

If someone is doing a good job why wouldn’t we want to keep them around? If a 30 year old is elected to congress I don’t see why they couldn’t serve for 40 years if they are competent.

> If someone is doing a good job why wouldn’t we want to keep them around?

Because they won't keep doing a good job. The longer a politician stays in office, the more they are corrupted. The only solution is to keep them from staying in office too long.

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