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North Dakotans Approve Age Limit for Members of Congress
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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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—