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Comment by RickS | Hacker News Reader

I have trouble predicting how public sentiment will evolve over time.

I'm not that young, and still and the last 10 years have left me with an absolutely blistering distrust of the 70+ crowd on any matter pertaining to positions of authority. I'd like to see ~67 and ~72 become the other 18 and 21: hard lines beyond which the law progressively rescinds the presumption of total competence.

It's not a pretty solution. There are certainly some 14 year olds who are more deserving of a drivers license than many of legal age. I would welcome a world where we can actually establish and enforce criteria that allow us to move beyond such crude numeric thresholds. But in the meantime, the bulk of us need protection from statistics. Desperately.

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Go look at the demographics of the last election and then tell me which groups shouldn't be allowed to vote.

That's a response to an opinion I don't hold, but I could have been more clear. The claim I'm making is about the fitness to hold office. Specifically: septo/octogenarians belong at the ballot box, but not on the ballot. If you'd like to dissuade me of something, that's the meat of it.

What is the justification? Why can someone vote for a future they're not likely have to endure?

We don't allow under 18s to vote, so clearly some age restrictions are legitimate.

Hey, I hear you, but the age cutoff could also be on holding office.

As someone just hitting the 60 yr old mark, and looking at my parents who are still pretty sharp in their late 80s, -- so definitely talking about myself and my capacity here,

No-one over 70 has any business in a high ranking government office. The mental flexibility isn't there.

Which means no one over 66 should be allowed to run office (yes, I know this puts senators in office until 72, and kicks out representatives at 68, but it also gives a single number which is easier to understand).

It's also a question of accountability. A 40 year old politician will expect/have to live with their choices for another 40 years.

It’s not just mental ability it’s a set of perverse incentives: the old robbing the future of the young, instead of planting trees whose shade the old will never personally enjoy.

Go look at recent changes to how young men vote and tell me which groups shouldn't be allowed to vote in the future.

Of course, when I go to my local city planning meetings and see the demographics shouting down any new housing my feelings are different.

> Go look at the demographics of the last election and then tell me which groups shouldn't be allowed to vote

The group that uses the rhetoric like "which groups shouldn't be allowed to vote". You tell me which one that is.

Testing is expensive, subjective and favors people with resources to game the test. When thinking about stuff like this, we should aim for something more universal, with the understanding that this is not a moral judgement on a person.

In the context of the article and of controls, I think we should worry more about controls on those in power (i.e., politicians) than others (i.e., voters).

I completely agree. With so many high profile cases of people suffering from some form of dementia being elected to important offices (McConnell and Feinstein; Biden and Trump), it's clear that the intended electoral mechanism isn't working to replace people who are not fit to serve. Name recognition & incumbency advantage are just too strong to allow the right thing to happen.

The version of the fix that I like is, if you would be 65 or older on the day you would begin holding the office, you are ineligible to be in the election or the appointment process. This gives some room for acknowledging that there isn't a clear cut-off where one immediately becomes unfit to serve. If you're a healthy 64, you can serve all the way to 70 for an office with a lengthy term; but if you're going soft at 65, then you don't need to make the difficult decision of whether or not to run. The decision has been made for you, way ahead of time, and you can make plans to retire and support a successor, avoiding a really nasty, personal primary process.

This would have nicely avoided Biden's awkward "will he, won't he" decision that led to the 2024 disaster we're still suffering from. Feinstein & McConnell would have retired well before their brains transformed into cottage cheese, turning them into jokes and destroying whatever legacies they worked to build. It's better for everyone.

Characterizing the problem as the electoral mechanism, wouldn't it make sense to push for better voting systems that don't empower the two party duopoly (eg Ranked Pairs) ?

It feels that while gerontocracy is a valid critique to illustrate the problem, it doesn't fully capture why our processes actively choose such bad leaders. Rather it kind of papers over the problem assuming that mental faculties mean good policies [0], give us a comforting thought that most of the recent relevant candidates would have been out of the picture, while not actually addressing the "shit sandwich vs turd torta" dynamic.

As for the Senate itself, I'd propose increasing the number of senators to 6 per state to dilute this effect of a strong senator being a boon to state regardless of how bad their politics are. Perhaps straight term limits for the Senate and the House as well.

[0] while it certainly means better policies than what we have now, the bar is currently on the floor.

I don't think a form of RCV would have a terribly significant impact on name recognition and incumbent advantage, which I think the are the main drivers of why we keep reelecting people who are obviously no longer competent. Feinstein's walking corpse being constantly reelected despite California having jungle primaries with many viable alternatives is a good example of how an alternate voting method does not solve this problem. It also wouldn't fix appointed positions, especially judges or filling vacated seats.

There are other great reasons to change our voting system! I just think it doesn't solve this exact problem, while an upper age limit does.

I'd say that a large part of incumbent advantage is directly related to plurality. I don't know the specific details of the elections that have kept Feinstein propped up. But I'd think the primary would revolve around a bunch of challengers that are each really liked by some people, but really hated by others - so Feinstein ends up getting the defensive vote from people who don't want change towards the popular challengers. Then the general election has the same effect, plus all the people that already "made their choice" in the primary.

Maybe the problem is structural: there is an absurd amount of power to be gained by seniority in both houses. To a voter there is a significant advantage to choosing an incumbent as their power increase with seniority.

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