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.
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.