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We have a built-in filter for this already, which are the primary and general elections. The problem is not politicians refusing to retire, but voters refusing to vote them out.

The Democrat/Republican party system is what gives incumbents such a lead over challengers. I don't think term limits are the fix, I think we need to change how campaigns are financed - because right now, the parties pick who gets money in downticket races, and incumbents have their own war chests. That leads to challengers being outspent.

I just keep thinking about how the national party rolled over for Dianne Feinstein in the 2018 senate election, even though she lost the support of the state party. No big democrats were willing to drop their support of her, and the national party wasn't going to spend money on a primary/general challenge to a seat that would stay blue.

"The problem is not politicians refusing to retire, but voters refusing to vote them out..."

Or is it the media running cover for the regime and gaslighting the public on the presidents fading mental capacity?

>voters refusing to vote them out.

US states are rapidly banning ranked-choice voting †, in efforts to prevent loss of their two-party systems. Campaign finance reform is definitely necessary, but so is the fundamental nature of how citizens choose representation.

†: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

Just one example would be Tennessee, which recently banned the practice after a Memphis suburb attempted to implement the practice.

Interesting, I view ranked Choice voting as diversifying the candidate pool. I expect this would increase third party voting not decrease it

Ranked-choice voting does exactly as you say, increasing the diversity of candidates (because no vote is ever "wasted").

It also completely blocks extremists. They are ranked first by their supporters but last by every single other voter. This effect is mostly visible in a 3+ party system though.

Wow:

https://reason.com/2022/04/28/florida-tennessee-ban-ranked-c...

This is naked anti-democratic power-mongering. The only reason to ban it outright (rather than, say, letting people try it and switch back if they find it "confusing") is because you're afraid that people might get the hang of it and think it should be used for state and national elections as well.

Their official reason (for banning RCV) is that it is too confusing for voters.

So what do I know, I'm just a moron..?

...thanks for the great Reason/link.

Voters do find it confusing. Not all of them, but enough that it matters. E.g.: In San Francisco, Chesa Boudin only won as District Attorney in the final stage of the final vote count because his supporters were more likely to know about and use RCV than moderate, conservative, and/or low-information voters.

1. How much of that is due to its inherent complexity, and how much is just due to its novelty? If they had grown up in a society where RCV was the default, how many of those people would still have been confused?

2. People misunderstand that FPTP requires tactical voting as well; are the number of people who will continue to misunderstand RCV if it were to become common higher than the number of people who currently misunderstand FPTP?

Consider that anyone who suggests you to vote third party to "end the two-party system", before the voting system has changed, fundamentally misunderstands how FPTP works as well.

> Since those committee chairs are very powerful, they get lots of campaign donations which help keep them in office

Incumbency is a huge thumb on the scales. A functional system needs to have certain checks on those in power that balance the playing field, otherwise democracy is a sham.

The two party system is a problem, but term limits are meant to solve a different issue.

Maybe not even modulo but something like seniority increases monotonically for five terms but decreases monotonically for each subsequent term after the fifth term.

as lobbyists, you guys are going to lose most of them at modulo and the rest at monotonically

Hey congress people, do you want your time in office to be much more fun and exciting? Vote yes on the Congressional Rollercoaster Act!

Term Limits. No real math is required.

Senate: 1 Term. 6 years. Not able to then serve in the House. House: 2 Terms. 4 years. Not able to then serve in the Senate. 1 Term House + 1 Term Senate. 8 years total.

Elect any LEGAL Citizen regardless of age.

Gives power to the permanent committee staff members and lobbyists who have institutional memory and social networks. No legislator could possibly understand all the nuances of policy with such short limits. Four terms, say, as a Senator and eight as a House member would be more practical.

Exactly this. California has enacted term limits and it hasn’t gone well.

Lobbyists run everything because the politicians are all too new. It also completely disincentivizes long-term thinking because the system guarantees they will be out of office by the time the chickens come home to roost.

I heard an interview from a state rep in Florida complaining about term limits, something like "your first term is like your Freshman year, you don't know anything, your second is like your Sophomore year, etc" and her point was that you can't get anything done without being able to serve at least 6 years or so.

I think that's kind of bogus. If you can't figure out how to be an effective politician in your first term then you don't deserve to be elected for a second!

I heard AOC talk about this and it does make sense. There's just a lot to learn about how things actually get done and only so much time in the day. It's not as simple as "Write bill, pass bill, job done". You have to figure out who are the people who actually have power in an agency, what their priorities are, how to word the bills so they will actually achieve what you want, etc. There's a lot to it.

The podcast with AOC: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-power-broker-04-r...

The long term thinking is how to get into their longer term lobbying career.

Term limits make sense for POTUS. There should be regular changes in Executive management of any organization.

But not the Legislative or Judicial branch. Age limits (minimum and maximum) avoid the "lobbyist capture" issue.

>should be regular changes in Executive

yeah, so we can notkeep every international promise going forward?

I disagree with POTUS term limits. If the citizenry want someone to stay in office, like we did for FDR, we shouldn't be forced to pick someone else.

Furthermore, having term limits on just one branch of government decreases the power of that branch without decreasing the power of the other branches creating a new balance of power (or imbalance).

Imagine having to vote for someone other than FDR in the 1940 election. Germany had swallowed most of Europe that year. I couldn't imagine being forced to vote for President Wendell Willkie or James Farley to lead us into war because the guy I want can't serve due to term limits.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-inv...

He won that election by a landslide.

Roosevelt won the 1940 election with 55% of the popular vote, 38 of the 48 states, and almost 85% of the electoral vote.

Term limits are actually bad for democracy. The most effective politicians are the ones who have learned how to do it over time. There's this bizarre American idea that being an elected official shouldn't be a job. It definitely should.

The problem here wouldn't even be solved by term limits, because Joe Biden has only been president for <4 years. The problem is that he has started to rapidly decline. Unless you institute some kind of Logan's Run Rule, you can't avoid elderly people in positions of power.

The actual, less fun solution, is for the party apparati to start elevating younger people to positions of power and influence. And that only happens if the members of that party start to demand it. It worked on Joe Biden, and he stepped aside.

Democracy is not there to be effective. It was meant to be a sociopath shredder, a wannabe kings and nobles grinder. But they reached critical mass and defanged the tax system, the most important containement vessel.

That's not true. Democracy is an end in and of itself, a system of government that at its best accurately reflects the will of the people. Preventing tyranny is a means to an end (preserving democracy) not the final goal.

And democracy is most certainly not a sociopath shredder. It runs on the power hungry. There are just supposed to be enough checks and balances to prevent any one person or minoritarian cabal from amassing too much power.

Defanged the tax system!?

The world's democratic governments tax and spend a greater % of GDP than ever before. The last time we were in this ballpark was in WW2.

Term limits are a dumb way to enforce change where there are definite benefits to institutional knowledge by the members, otherwise they are targets for capture by staffers and lobbyists.

Have a minimum (25 for House, 35 for Senate, POTUS, Judge) and maximum (75) age for all positions.

>Elect any LEGAL citizen regardless of age

I’m not sure why you feel the need to say “LEGAL citizen” and am kind of afraid to ask you to unpack it.

The problem is, that's been tried and SCOTUS ruled it unconstitutional in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Term_Limits,_Inc._v._Thor... ), so a constitutional amendment would be needed. Good luck with that.

It’s not just limited to politicians

A whole generation is unwilling to acknowledge their mortality, step aside and make room (although unlike politicians many aren’t because they can’t afford to)

The generation should not have to voluntarily step back. The political system should be such that it allows for middle aged people to enter.

Parties should be able to place age restrictions on the candidates.

That can't stop an elderly candidate from running third party to spite the eligibility rules, but that's already the case.

Hypothetically, but parties are also incredibly weak right now.

In California, we run an Open Primary system for every partisan office outside the POTUS so parties can’t even guarantee they’ll get a candidate into the general election even if they are otherwise eligible to put nominees forward and sometimes it’s Democrat vs Democrat (this has been happening for US Senate elections) or in some legislative districts Republican vs Republican.

Then coming from the opposite direction, you had a complete outsider in Trump effectively takeover the Republican Party in 2016 and he’s still holding the reins in 2024. Bernie Sanders almost managed something similar with the Democratic Party and they just barely held strong enough to keep that from happening. Twice.

Frankly political parties are incredibly unlikely to come together to impose any restrictions that would impose any kind of extra burden on their elder members, let alone age-gate them.

I missed the part where you explain how Bernie Sanders is a meaningful analog to Donald Trump, such that his primary defeats should be hailed as “holding strong” against an insurgent candidate?

Well the unknown variable is whether like Trump he would prove to be more popular than the party he ran under after a successful Presidential election effectively taking it over so you got me there; but they were in 2016 both outsiders who came into their parties to run for President under an already successful Party-brand and made a helluva run, one more successfully than the other.

Either way, neither of them should have gotten as far as they did.