Over 75% of voters want maximum age limit for elected officials, poll shows

I'm 62, which is embarrassingly old to be effing around on the fediverse.

But I just want to say these octogenarians can't possibly represent me.

It's partly their age.

But to me wealth is the more corrupting factor. Some of these people have never had a real job, or at least in decades.

I'm both hoping to work until I'm 70 or die sooner.

These rich assholes can't represent anyone except other rich assholes.

I don't understand why there aren't term limits across the board either. Some Congress wo/men have been there for decades ffs!

I think term limits would be 90% effective. That and fixing gerrymandered districts. How many of those old folks in the House have been cruising to easy reelection due to rigged voting districts? Limit the House to 5 terms and the Senate to 2 terms. That's a maximum of 22 years someone could be a federal elected politician excluding the presidency. That's more than enough time to leave their mark on the country.

The issue with enacting a mandatory age limit in a democratically elected government is essentially conceding to the idea that the voters are unable to determine for themselves whether an elected official is competent, or not. This has substantial, and serious implications.

they shouldn't even be driving a car. statistics show that for every year over 70 is similar as a year under 20 for drivers. so a 75 year old drives like a 15 year old. and a 90 year old is a newborn?

Just make the retirement age enforced for elected officials too. If the average American is expected to retire at 67, shouldn't our representatives be younger than that?

And a basic mental aptitude test please, we don't need psychos or idiots either

TBH I think these calls for age limits or term limits are indirectly targeting real problems (like since when do we want people born before the automotive age regulating the internet? and why are both parties led by people still stuck in the 70s?) but the indirect-targeting has a way of creating unintended consequence:

• a shorter term limit will term out qualified, great representatives with real expertise

• a shorter term limit may intensify corruption if a rep or senator only has so much time to cash in and line up that fat consulting gig

Fundamentally, the voters should be voting out the Feinsteins and McConnells when their age or health conflicts with their ability to represent their interests, and this "let's have age limits and term limits" resolve kinda speaks to me of a desire for self-governance to happen, but without voters having any responsibility in the matter. It's time for our relationship to self-rule be a lot less passive, a lot more assertive.

The meta-problems at play (corruption, the presence of money in politics, the role of first-past-the-post voting to force voters to vote based on how they bet other people will vote, etc) aren't going to be resolved by term limits or age limits- if we want our elected officials to reflect the public interest, all of those conflicts-of-interest have to go.

I'd like to see ranked-choice voting replace FPTP, and for money to be strictly limited in politics, and an end to the permanent campaign our politics have become, and for revolving-door gigs for ex-legislators and regulators to be strictly scrutinized, and for voters to be able to confidently vote out their dinosaurs. If we fix those things, the problem of being ruled by people too old to do the job probably goes away by itself.

The other 25% are old.

Retirement age is 67. If that's good enough for the normal workers than any politically connected office should be the same.

Permanently Deleted

Moscow mitch is the perfect example for this. ~4 years ago he was spearheading overturning wade vs roe, and now he can barely make a sentence on TV. There HAS to be room for retirement between those 2 stages of brain damage.

I'd think, because the Constitution only defines minimum ages, we would need an amendment identifying maximum ages.

65? 70?

Let's set it up with term limits as well.

President is already capped at 2 terms of 4 each, what seems fair for everyone else?

2 six-year terms for Senator? 12 years?

6 two year terms for Congress? Also 12 years?

18 years for Supreme Court?

I think term limits for Congress, Senate and supreme court would be a better solution. You can be Bernie and be old and lucid and not totally stuck the past but if you've been in office for 50 years GTFO and let someone else try.

It doesn’t matter what we want. This has been proven many times over. They American government is beyond checks and balances. They do what they want- not what we want.

This age discrimination is a clever right wing ploy to remove Bernie from office and to hurt Biden's re-election. And I can tell from the responses here and in real life that it's working.

There are plenty of people on the right who are willing to stooge exactly like McConnell does, but highly principled lifelong public servants with almost no skeletons in their closet like Bernie are pretty much impossible to replace.

In any matchup against Biden, besides Trump, age favours the GOP. In a matchup between Trump and Biden, they are both the same age, but since the media has been using Biden's stutter and unflattering video cuts to make him look senile, it still favours Trump.

Ultimately people need to stop voting for bad people, especially ones have already proven that they do a bad job, regardless of their age.

75% of voters don't vote, so as usual, this is an utterly pointless poll.

Why don’t they just vote for younger people? Why does there need to be a law?

Now if only polls mattered, then we could be on our way to making sure the majority of the people who participated in polls are happy!

I don't want age limits because that's ableist. I want term limits. That's an entirely different thing and this poll is intended to receive/manufacture consent.

I would tend to agree, however, I do wonder what happens if something like this were put into place, and then life extension starts redefining what "old" means.

Damn I hope our country can fix this massive issue in the next 5 to 10 years.

Yup, that is the solution! As if we can't vote them our or primary them.

Instead of and age limit, I think there should be a maximum sexual assault limit. Like if someone was found either civilly liable or criminally convicted of sexual assault 1 or more times, then they should be disqualified for any office.

Term limits solves most of this.

Just say no to OLD WHITE ASS

I wonder what the response would be if the question were phrased differently. For instance, "Do you believe you should be able to vote for the person you support?"

Edit: Have to laugh at the downvotes.

Does that mean you do don't think people should be able to vote for the person they support? What age should be the cutoff point? How about limiting the voting age to those between 30 and 65? Maybe candidates should be required to be right-handed.

The way to decrease the average age of candidates is to support, organize, and vote for younger ones, not start restricting who you can vote for.

A more pressing question might be, "Do you think a felon who's incarcerated in a Georgia state prison should be allowed to be president?"

Age limits seem ridiculous in a democracy. If you think someone is too old, there is a great way to remove them. Don't vote for them. Anything less then that is not democratic.

Personally I think these polls are silly or inaccurate. If 75% of voters think there should be an age limit, then why are there so many old politicians?

Then stop voting for the old people.

We have a defacto age limit, and voters can decide it every election.

I dont know why anyone bothers with polls for what they want from politicians. Because theres one poll that decides what we actually want. If you dont want a really old guy for president, dont fuckin vote for one!

So much of this is just stuff that sounds nice until you think about it, codifying ageism and blocking older people from political life is unjust and undemocratic.

Over 75% of 2,335 voters (the amount of participants in this poll). These polls mean nothing.

75% reactionaries. Yeah, let's throw out all our most experienced, knowledgeable people.

It seems cool at first but think it through. It's a dumb idea to combat a problem that really isn't that big of a problem. For every zombie like Diane Feinstein, there's a Bernie Sanders that's sharper and more energetic than some 20 something's I know.

We have a perfectly good mechanism to get zombies out of office without throwing out the baby with the bath water, and it's called voting.

There already is a limit - it's called an election.

Edit: It seems to me that people just don't care enough about democracy and they want to blame the government for their poor choices. This is stupid and a distraction from issues that matter. Issues that we should be voting about. 75% of people should stop being lazy Americans and vote. Also, we've gotta keep pushing for Ranked Choice Voting. THIS would solve the problem of ineffective politicians more so than taking rights away from (dumb and lazy) voters.