When it comes to age on the ballot, Texas didn’t wait until 2024 to weigh in.
Asked to let judges stay on the bench until they’re 79 years old — a year younger than President Joe Biden — Texas voters soundly rejected the proposal in Tuesday’s elections, a defeat that drew new attention to issues of age and fitness for office in the U.S.
“Age is front of mind for American voters in a way that it has not traditionally been and they are nervous about it,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.
Others cautioned against broader takeaways. At least four other states have rejected similar proposals over the last decade, according to the National Center for State Courts. And states that have passed the measures have mostly done so in close votes.
Get ready for an unpopular opinion: Old age should not be a basis on which someone is disqualified from holding office.
Why not? Because it is wrong to cast aspersions on someone because of something they did not choose. It remains appropriate to only qualify people for elected office if they are old enough, because we want people to have enough perspective and life experience, and that is directly related to being old enough.
Pretending we dont decline mentally past the age of 80 is a very stupid take.
These are the people who lead our communities. We need them to be in peak mental health.
Then disqualify people on the basis of mental decline.
And we’ve seen how well that’s been working for aging boomer politicians…
Look at Feinstein. They literally had to pry that seat from her cold dead fingers.
Ideally, you’re correct and I would agree. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works in reality.
I’ll counter with the example of Bernie Sanders, who is 82 years old, still sharp as a tack, and arguably the furthest left person in the federal government. Jimmy Carter is 99 years old, and while I know we’re not hearing much from him anymore, he’s been an incredible force for good well into his nineties. (Yes, I know he hasn’t held elected office since early 1981, but he damned well could have, and done it well.)
Yes, Feinstein should have retired a very long time ago, not because of her age, but because of her mental decline.
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The way to avoid that, and to respect individual differences, is with standardized periodic testing, which I would support for sure.
Of course, standardized testing. Thats never failed categorically to assess entire generations on a grand sweeping scale.
And yet you think an arbitrary age line is more reliable?
Or we can disqualify them based on “we know youre declining because of basic biological fact, and you dont need to be so fucking obsessed with power that you cling to it at 80 fucking years old, step down and retire.”
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How so?
My concern is judges that old not understanding the modern way of life for most people.
The life of a moden 25 year old and a 75 year old judge when he was 25 are so different they may as well have been from opposite ends of the world.
The real problem lies in the how SCOTUS rules on Constitutional matters, using “original intent” vs “original intent AND current societal, technological, etc changes” (which is how Canada’s SCoC rules).
Fun fact: it’s legal to discriminate in the US based on age. But only towards younger, not older. You can’t discriminate because someone is too old, but you CAN if they are “too young”.
I believe the cut off for age discrimination suits is 40, but I’d have to look it up again.
Maybe it’s not about casting aspersions but rather fitness for the job. If a surgeon loses their arms in a tragic accident they probably won’t be allowed to operate. Pilots are forced to retire at a certain age because of this well documented age-related decline. If natural mental decline from age impairs one’s ability to make fair and reasonable judgements and/or causes one to lose touch with the society they are resolving conflicts within, that seems like it would similarly impair a judge’s ability to effectively do their job.
Saying a class of people shouldn’t be making rights for the country when they won’t be around to see the consequences isn’t casting aspersions on anyone.
I think term limits would rid us of career politicians like McConnell. Why have term limits for president and not far more powerful senators?
The only reason we have term limits for President is because the Republican party wanted to ensure that they got “a turn” in the wake of FDR.