https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/11/us/north-dakota-age-limit-election.html
A ballot measure left voters to decide whether 81 is too old for some political jobs. It was one state’s answer to an issue that has been a focus of national debate this election cycle.
Surprisingly based from ND, to be completely honest
TL;DR; they can't run if they would turn 81in the last year of their term.
The headline sounds nice but this law barely does anything to address the issue. Legislators also expect this law to be overturned so it's more of a vague gesture than it is an enforcable measure
It would disqualify the 2 major presidential candidates if it was applied nationally, as well as 50 sitting members of Congress (assuming they all wanted to run)
Does it at least set some kind of (small) precedent? I don't know of anywhere in the US that has an old-age restriction like this
(Setting aside for the moment that the constitution explicitly states that age is a factor in eligibility for office -- must be 35 to be president -- so why wouldn't age also be a factor at the other end?)
Age over 40 is a protected class, and it is discrimination against old people to block them from running. Congress updating the law or a new ammendment is required to meaningfully get term limits. The old people aren't going to do that.
You kinda didn't though? The age limit is 81. Retirement is 65. 16 years. That's someones childhood. That's longer than some peoples careers. Gotta start somewhere I guess. Impressed it happened, disappointed at the fine print. Nice headline though.
They have one; it's 16 with parental consent, 18 otherwise.
https://www.findlaw.com/state/north-dakota-law/north-dakota-marriage-age-requirements-laws.html
The four states that don't have a minimum marriage age are California, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Oklahoma; and all of them require parental consent or a court order for under-18s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_age_in_the_United_States#Underage_marriage
Mississippians:
"I give my 16-year-old daughter permission to marry my 68-year-old drinking buddy, or else I'll stop giving her an allowance"
/s
Term limits for congress and the senate are also needed , make it so that you can not serve more than 2 terms in any state or federal office. This would reduce the influence of career politicians and allow fresh ideas to be tried.
It would also limit effectiveness in an important and difficult job that requires potentially years of procedural understanding and relationship building to pass impactful legislation.
A company where every employee was “junior” would waste a lot of time and money.
This. I have no idea why it's a popular trope to just talk about "term limits" as if it would actually solve anything. For some reason, actual expertise at governing is frowned on, but I doubt the very people arguing for term limits would ever argue for term limits for a plumber, a dentist, a mechanic, a roofer...anyone up for having their teeth drilled by an "outsider"? I know I'm not.
Yeah, I have strongly mixed feelings on this. Perhaps we should intact term limits, but probably not as short as usually proposed and probably paired with something to limit outside influence. The common claim I hear is that with a more junior Congress they would be even more reliant on the parts of "government" that stick around longer, like lobbyists.
The call for term limits usually comes from the people who want (need?) government to be impotent and dysfunctional - typically echoing messages that very wealthy capitalists have injected into the public discourse.
Yes, it's a common talking point of the far right and when someone brings it up as some kind of magical solution to something it's a red flag. It might be that they are arguing in good faith for it, but haven't really thought it through...
The problem is all the legalized bribery. Having short-term whores in Congress won't change that at all, it would only give the illusion of change for the better. It would more likely make things far, far worse.
It requires years of procedural understanding because there's no term limits. There isn't benefit to that excessive procedure apart from making junior representatives lives more difficult. Congress can make their own rules, and they make them benefit those who have been there for 30 years. A term limited Congress can make rules that work better for them.
Except it would be reducing the influence of career politicians by increasing the influence of corporate plants. It would make political offices even more of a revolving door than they already are. Would also increase the number of people just going rogue on their last term because “what are you gonna do, not elect me again?”
A whole lot of other shit would need to change first before implementing term limits would make any sense to do. At the very least overturning the Citizens United decision and some sort of mechanism to help ensure that politicians actually govern according to the platform they run on. And arguably both of those things would do a lot more to help our current problems than term limits would…which means neither is ever going to happen.
I think these are separate issues and can be managed using different strategies. Corporate influence is about $$ and many different, constitutional remedies can be applied for that.
Why would corporate influence increase with term limits? It's way easier to influence the same person for 30 years than a new person every 5-10 years.
Not when the new person goes straight from being on your payroll to being in office, then back to being on your payroll when they’re done.
No. Absolutely not. The problem here is age, not politics as a career. This is how you get monolithic parties where the internal politics between unelected party officials and billionaires run the country.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Voters in North Dakota approved a ballot measure that sets a maximum age for representing the state in Congress, The Associated Press said on Tuesday.
Experts said they believed North Dakota was the first state to impose such a requirement on members of Congress, though they said the measure is likely to be challenged in court.
The measure provided a rare glimpse into how one state’s voters think about age at a time when questions over the effectiveness of older political leaders have been part of the national conversation.
As a practical matter, the rule does not pose a threat to the state’s three current federal lawmakers, all Republicans, who range in age from 47 to 67.
In 2022, Mr. Hendrix led a successful effort to set term limits for governor and state legislators.
A Supreme Court case in 1995 established that states cannot add eligibility restrictions beyond those in the Constitution.
The original article contains 338 words, the summary contains 152 words. Saved 55%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I don't care how old a person is... I care if they're sound of mind. We need to start having cognitive testing done before someone can run
You're not allowed to be an airline pilot over the age of 67. If that's too old to command a plane, it's too old to command a country.
I mean... I could see quick reflexes coming into play for a pilot more than for a president though
The military retires officers of all ranks at 62. If you're too old to sit in an office and command a division, you're too old to sit in the oval office and command the entire military.
That'll never happen, too easy to fudge. Worse, as medical technology improves lifespans increase. By 2100 (if we're still here) we could potentially have people 150 fucking years old or more in politics that started at 30. You think some old, rich bastard 50 years out of touch is bad, wait until that old, rich bastard is 100 years out of touch. Or 200. Or fuck knows how long we could drag this shit out for if you're rich and powerful enough to get the longevity tech, medicine, etc.
Old people aren't sound of mind by 70. Most current cognitive screening is about Alzheimer's which is far to low of a bar to be meaningful for congressional representation.
While I like the idea, I can’t imagine it would pass a constitutional test. However, an age limit that kicks in only after a person has been in an elected position for X years probably could. This would allow an 81 year old that had never held office to run for the first time and not be discriminated based on age.
It won't survive a court challenge, as the Supreme Court already ruled on this back in 1995 in the case of U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton. The ruling says that states can't add additional eligibility requirements to be elected to or otherwise serve in federal office beyond what the constitution lists.
I think that one of the greatest things about the Constitution, the idea that it's dynamic, has been lost to the result of FPTP--this two-party lock that won't allow for any amendments. We now treat the document like a religious text instead of a tool we can and should update to be relevant and responsive when absolutely necessary.
But go off about how much I hate this country or whatever. I'm clearly very apathetic about its vision.
IMHO, corporate social media has ruined American culture. It has amplified detrimental voices to society and at the heart of America's woes is a rotting culture.
I always worry that putting so much on FPTP as the problem is going to backfire. I open to trying to move away from it, but it does make it a little cheaper for dark money to invest in a candidate's image when they only have to maintain a strong showing vs overwhelming the 50% total tally.
It didn't keep the UK from Brexit and the EU is moving to the right. FPTP may not the game changer we imagine, it may simply be a 'grass is always greener' scenario.
So you’re saying there is a constitutional provision to prevent young people from running for office but not old people?
Given that on average teenagers are, according to any testable criteria, smarter and saner than old people, maybe the constitution needs to be amended. Septuagenarians shouldn’t even be allowed to vote let alone run the fucking country.
While I think mandatory retirement ages need to be discussed across the board on all three branches, it's a cheap shot and unconstitutional
Why is it unconstitutional? We have age minimums. If you are a commercial pilot there are age limits.
Because right now there are no age limitations in the Constitution for elected officials. A state cannot change that, it needs a constitutional amendment.
The are age requirements for minimum age but not limited age. You would have to have a constitutional amendment to change that.
Disagree with this one, voters should have the final say in who is electable. If there's an 85 year old out there who can convince 51% of the electorate to vote for them in the primaries, go for it. This rule will become a problem if life expectancy continues to increase at the rate it has the past 50 years, with AI and some major changes in genetics, we are poised to solve a lot of causes of death in our lifetime, which means longer life expectancy.
Although I agree with this in principle, it ignores the reality of why officeholders get re-elected into their 70s and 80s. It's not because voters like them in particular, but it's because they are the "safe" option. They increasingly become nobody's first choice but there is often no logical alternative. Incumbents are also much more able to raise more campaign money than their opponents and thus have a large advantage just because they can blast their message more often.
Or because they're just genuinely well received by the public. One of my reps has been in public service for decades and I actually like most of his positions. The longer you are in office, in theory, the better you will understand the legislative system and be able to push issues your constituents want. If you do, you keep getting re-elected, if you don't, you don't.
Regardless, this is a problem of FPTP and the primary system not age. Primaries select for who is considered the "most electable" not the candidate "most want". Fix that system, and age is not an issue. Or if more people who don't like 80 year olds participated in the primaries this would also be less of an issue. But they don't, they just complain about the "lesser of two evils" choice even though they had a "lesser of 10 evils choice" and chose not to participate in it.
I agree that the first-past-the-post voting system should be replaced with something better, but at the same time, complaining that people should participate more in primary elections is not a solution to the problem. A solution would be implement mandatory voting. That's not a popular solution (and you probably personally hate the idea), but it is a solution. I am not advocating for it.
There's also just a sense of election fatigue. The US has a general election every other year which is far more often than most other countries.
At the same time—
Kind of short sighted, especially as life extension may come online and some age-related diseases may become a thing of the past.
That ain't happening for a while. When the average age starts hitting the 150s, then maybe the age limit can go up
Given how slow government works, it could happen and then it would be hard to get rid of even when ridiculously outdated as a notion.
Kind of like the EC.
Yeah but on the primary ballot was an 82 Year Old man who recently tried to citizens arrest a train for blocking the road, so when those things you mentioned come around maybe they can reconsider it but for now it seems like a good idea.
That's why some kind of competency test would be better. And some arbitrary limit just based on a number would be very hard to reverse/update later.
Not really. It would just require another vote. Laws get removed and updated all the time. Recently there have been about a dozen states lowering age requirements for having a job, same with permitless concealed carry in 25 states.
If anything, it's way too easy to remove these laws made to protect people.
But why though? Suppose someone like Bernie were to be among the first wave of people living way past current life expectancy?
If we take someone like Biden, for example, and say, he was given 100 more years of healthspan. Given the arc he's been on, even as a relative moderate, I'd take that, assuming he's on a trajectory.
I think ruling out people based on the mere number of times they've been around the sun is kind of dumb.
Hold up, you think I like the idea of Biden being around longer in our politics? Cause I don't.
You think it's good to let out-of-touch boomers control the government because we might cure aging soon? Weird take but ok. Also not like if this fantasy scenario happened, the boomers wouldn't get any more in-touch with reality and make better decisions. Do you have zero faith in anyone younger than 75 making better decisions here?
I don't want anyone that is out of touch at any age.
Again, if someone is of sound mind and body and has the right platform, I don't really care what their age is. I think arbitrarily setting an age limit is rather blinkered. I also happen to think setting age minimums may also look rather silly and arbitrary at some future point (assuming a more reliable metric comes about).